As I’ve mentioned on a few occasions, Belgrade doesn’t really have a great offer of jazz concerts by well-known international musicians. However, when it comes to the club or underground scene, the situation is somewhat better. Or when we’re talking about areas where jazz intersects with alternative music. One of the side effects of the war in Ukraine has been a large influx of recent arrivals from Russia into Belgrade—tens of thousands, mostly young people, often from the creative industries and the arts, have been here for 2–3 years now and are very active across various fields. Among other things, they’ve launched several new alternative music festivals and venues, and many of them also show up at concerts we organize at Studio 6 of Radio Belgrade—especially when it comes to avant-garde jazz. All of this has brought fresh blood into the local concert life.

Wacław Zimpel

The first concert I attended this week was a solo performance by Wacław Zimpel (clarinet, electronics). Those who closely follow the free jazz scene might remember his first notable band, Undivided, whose album Passion was voted the best album of 2010 by readers of the freejazzblog.org. Over the next few years, he established himself as one of the most exciting voices of the Polish avant-garde jazz scene, after which he increasingly turned toward experimenting with minimalist music. During that period, he released several excellent albums as well. Then he gradually moved into the world of electronics, drifting further away from jazz, only occasionally performing in formations more firmly connected to the genre.

We first exchanged emails back in 2016, when I was curating the music program of the Nova Festival in Pančevo. A friend from my youth, who has good connections at the Polish embassy, hinted that the new ambassador was into jazz and that there was a good chance of co-funding a concert by a Polish musician if I had a strong idea. Zimpel was the first person who came to mind—I reached out to him, and we agreed that in 2017 he would bring the LAM Trio. I remember that whole process and all our conversations, both by email and in person, very fondly, and a recording of the Pančevo concert is available here:

After that, he came to Serbia several more times—some concerts I attended, some I missed. When we met in the half-empty Dim club, it felt like a reunion of old friends, even though we hadn’t really stayed in touch over the years. I was genuinely happy to see him, and it seems to me that Zimpel also remembers that whole experience from about ten years ago with fondness. He recalls how fantastic his last Belgrade concert was with the Indian band Saagara—a project he has been actively maintaining for over a decade—unfortunately, I wasn’t at that performance.

Somewhere online I read that Dim club has a “Berlin vibe,” which I can’t really confirm since I’ve only been to Berlin a couple of times and didn’t quite grasp much of its club scene. But it is one of those rustic, abandoned factory spaces with peeling walls, hosting DJ nights and avant-garde/alternative concerts.

After the short intro set by experimental guitar player Vukašin Đelić, Wacław Zimpel fit well into that setting with his set, which this time leaned more toward electronics than instrumental playing. The Polish musician used the clarinet mostly as one of the sound layers he manipulated during the performance, and in that sense I was left with a slight sense of missing out; but it’s clear that this is the direction Zimpel is moving in today and something he obviously enjoys. The day after Belgrade, he set off on tour with British DJ and electronic music artist James Holden, which has been one of his main collaborations in recent years.

In any case, I’ll be returning on Eurojazzist to Zimpel’s magnificent body of work from 2010 to 2020, which is personally closest to me. Stay tuned.

Iztok Koren & Raphael Rogiński

Today, it is no longer considered entirely appropriate to use the genre label “world music,” and there are more and more voices pointing out its problematic nature. Whether it’s about the position of Western-world arrogance that lumps everything else into a single drawer without making an effort to understand it, or the idea of the “exoticization” of other musical traditions—often older than the European one, not to mention the American. To be honest, I myself haven’t thought about all of this enough, and I’m now carefully reading and listening to reflections by very thoughtful musicians such as Vijay Iyer and Golnar Shahyar, who often address, on their social media, questions of how Western media and audiences relate to music from other parts of the world, as well as the discourse of public speech about different musical traditions. In any case, I still have a long road of learning ahead of me, and I’m glad to have people I can learn from.

Perhaps a few years ago I would have instinctively labeled the music of Iztok Koren & Raphael Rogiński as “world music.” Fortunately, terms like “imaginary folklore” are now circulating more widely through media and social networks, and there’s also that old Jarrett description of his solo improvised music—“universal folk music.” Iztok Koren plays various instruments, but the central ones are the banjo and the guembri, while Rogiński plays electric guitar. Their music is repetitive, atmospheric, elegiac. Slow and patient, even when unfolding in short pieces and vignettes. We could also call it cinematic. One can imagine American prairies as the visual backdrop of the music, but also North African landscapes. Or ancient Europe, as we who know it only through books and films might imagine it, yet still have a sense of its sensibility.

The concert took place within the Fields Festival, which spans a very broad range of genres, with an emphasis on the new/experimental/innovative within the market underground. It was scheduled for 6 PM, while it was still daylight outside, and flashes of the setting sun were breaking through the large windows of the Karmakoma club straight onto the stage. The audience was still gathering, as it was the first concert of the evening. Personally, I really appreciated these circumstances—there was no crowd or chatter, the sound was well set, and the musicians were focused and inspired. Everything was just right and lasted exactly as long as it should.

Fish in Oil

Although Fish in Oil has existed since 1993, the format we recognize today has been active since around 2010–2011. The band was founded by Serbian guitarist Bratislav Radovanović, who at one point became “infected” with the sound of Marc Ribot and John Zorn’s Electric Masada and transferred those musical affinities into the band. But also much more—the sensibility of Ry Cooder, the film music of Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, a love of Charles Mingus, punk rock, and so on. After about a decade in a more or less stable lineup, in recent years Fish in Oil have increasingly been experimenting with various musicians, with the only constants being Radovanović himself and bassist Branislav Radojković.

At the gig in Kvaka 22—another Belgrade “loft space”—they were joined by truly excellent musicians: free jazz drummer Aleksandar Škorić (whom I mentioned in my text about John Dikeman’s concerts in Belgrade), violist and vocalist Jelena Popržan (who lives and works in Austria and occasionally returns to her native Serbia), and saxophonist/electroacoustic improviser Ilia Belorukov, who moved to Serbia from Saint Petersburg a few years ago.

Although I’ve already noted this, I’ll say it again: this was an underground club gig, with everything that such a concert entails. That is—fluctuations in the quality of the sound mix, chatter in the audience, and so on. There was also a completely drunk (or stoned?) guy yelling in the front row, whom people kept moving aside every five minutes, and even the musicians had to intervene from the stage. There were also regular fans in the front rows genuinely enjoying themselves. And some random people who just went out for the night. Also, family and friends of the musicians.

On the other hand, this kind of messy atmosphere can bring a lot of good—there’s no pressure of an “official concert”, and the band can really let loose, go all in. Sometimes they even have to, to overpower the audience noise, and sometimes they probably want to—because why not relax, surrender to each other, step on the gas, and see what might emerge from that spontaneity and mutual energy?

Jelena Popržan may come from a “new music” scene (classical/ethno/impro) or a reference system we associate, for example, with Iva Bittová, but I also recognize in her a sharp spirit, a joyful and playful intellect reminiscent of the legendary bassist Joëlle Léandre. That’s exactly what I thought last night while enjoying some of her improvisations. Both she and Škorić—musicians with strong and distinctive personalities—fit into the band perfectly. They brought a lot of their own voice, but didn’t overtake or hijack the stage; in the manner of experienced musicians, they found a way to enrich and catapult into the cosmos what is the music of “old Fish in Oil” with what is “theirs.” Unfortunately, Ilia Belorukov’s saxophone was collateral damage of the club sound mix—it was barely audible at moments when he seemed most playful. His electronic improvisations worked well, but for a full impression I’ll have to wait for another opportunity.

I’ve seen various Fish in Oil formations, and this one so far feels the most exciting. Radovanović and Radojković seem very happy in this new phase of the band, which relies less on a fixed lineup and more on “fluidity” and trying out different new approaches within a recognizable authorial universe. This time they named the band Fish in Oil Underground— I wouldn’t mind if they stuck with that name and concept.

One of the albums that has caught my ear in recent weeks is the new release by the Metropole Orkest, titled “Arakatak“. Although I’ve been listening to a lot of small ensembles and solo albums this year, this band—with its sheer grandeur—brought an interesting contrast and a much-needed listening balance. Even though we’re talking about an ensemble with an impressive 80-year tradition and top-tier professionals, I couldn’t help but wonder how difficult and challenging it actually is to bring everything into a cohesive whole, when you have an orchestra of symphonic proportions at your disposal. And on top of that—eight pieces by eight different composers on a single album.

That’s why I found it particularly interesting to talk about this release with conductor Miho Hazama, who has been on a remarkable rise in recent years and has also been one of the orchestra’s regular guest conductors for some time now. She composed one of the tracks, while the other contributors featured on the album include Vince Mendoza, Donny McCaslin, Tineke Postma, Mark Guiliana, Shai Maestro, Louis Cole, and Morris Kliphuis. We also briefly touch on her new album “Frames”, which will be released on Edition Records on April 24.

On the new Metropole Orchestra album, eight different composers are represented, and several compositions have credited arrangers. You are the composer of one track, but the conductor for the entire project. Could you describe your process of working on material that involves so many creators, as well as a large ensemble of instrumentalists?

Before being a conductor, I was a part of producer-team to make sure that we get together a collection of music that could be an album together. On behalf of Metropole Orkest, we commissioned a piece to the composers, but we didn’t have any specific request to each person, so we didn’t know what piece we were going to have until we took a look at scores! Making a decision of which pieces we are going to put together as an album was a long, yet very important process of the producer team.

Then as a conductor — I already knew which pieces to conduct! So, studying the music was easy and comfortable. But as rehearsal went on, I discovered so many new aspects of the amazing compositions we had. The music inspired me (my brain as composer part!), so that I could suggest some balance issues or form (drama-making) issues as a conductor. It was a phenomenal experience.

I still get goosebumps conducting “Arakatak”. This piece has so much depth that I can dig in and in!

You have been working with the Metropole Orchestra for several years. What was special for you about this particular project and album?

It was special that I got to conduct compositions by my heroes!

Also, I have been a big fan of Vince Mendoza since I was in high school. Conducting Vince Mendoza’s piece is so magical. I want to study as much as possible, and his composition still sounds like magic to me.

You have extensive experience with big bands of various sizes. What is specific about working with the Metropole Orchestra, considering its scale?

MO’s strength is groove. Everyone can groove. It is usually tough or unfamiliar for strings, harp, classical percussionists to groove - because they are not used to this approach. This orchestra - every single person - can swing and groove!

When discussing influences and musicians who have shaped your work, Jim McNeely (with whom you studied) and Maria Schneider, probably the greatest living jazz conductor, are invariably mentioned. How did they help you form your jazz style and find your own voice?

I studied with Jim McNeely for two years in master’s degree at Manhattan School of Music. Although I was the only student who didn’t have a bachelor’s degree in jazz major before coming to the school, the compositional process Jim taught me was very similar with what I learned from classical music college in Tokyo. That helped a lot. I didn’t have to “improvise” and come up with compositional ideas right away, but spent A LOT OF TIME to sketch, think, get ideas together, and write on scores. “Every note has to have a meaning.” This used to be a motto of my classical composition professor, and it was technically same with Jim. It was very inspiring to see his crazy sketches, ideas and explanations of his works. It was also really meaningful to observe how he made his career, too.

Other heroes, such as Maria, Vince, Gil Goldstein and Mike Holober — I mainly studied their scores. I haven’t really had specific lessons with them.

You come from Japan, live and work in New York, but are increasingly collaborating with European orchestras. How similar—or different—is it to work with big bands in the U.S. versus Europe?

NYC is a distinctive city not only in the US, but in the world. I’ve never seen a city with such high competition for jazz musicians! People in this city also have incredible energy, passion and intensity. I personally can’t keep living in this city for consecutive 5 months, or I would get crazy (haha). I appreciate that energy/pressure, but that’s too intense to keep getting into my life.

Having said that, musicians in NYC are very talented, cool and very practical (rational). They need a conclusion/decision right away, and I have to be clear with my opinion. There is only YES or NO.

On the other hand, European bands need discussions. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need a conclusion right away. I can’t be that intense in front of European bands, but I would need a lot more time to rehearse.

Your new album “Frames” with the Danish Radio Big Band will be released soon. You’ve mentioned that “This project reflects on the legacy of the Danish Radio Big Band and its former chief conductors, whose musical language has shaped generations of composers and musicians.” What in the history of the Danish Radio Big Band is particularly appealing to you?

Denmark has a very rich jazz history from 1960’s. And I have a privilege to work with the Danish radio big band, who is a good part of the Danish jazz history. A lot of amazing guest artists have played with the band, and amazing people have led the band. They have a fabulous collection of music that is dedicated to them. Learning their musical heritage became a big encouragement and inspiration to me. At the same time, I obviously didn’t want to copy-and-paste the past. So, I studied compositions/music repertoires from 7 former chief conductors of the band and took a time to experiment materials till I “digest” these as a part of my musical language.

I hope the listeners can feel essence of our legacy, but something fresh, too. The other big concept of this album is “unconditional love” - as we love each other, we love music, we lost loved one (Jim McNeely) right before our recording, and we shared so many emotions together. I hope you are going to hear the love we have.

More interviews on Eurojazzist.com:

Ever since I first heard Daniel Erdmann in concert with Das Kapital in 2011, I’ve been in love with the way he plays the saxophone. I experienced him as one of those musicians who bring humor into jazz in a lucid, effortless way. Like, for example, John Lurie in his The Lounge Lizards, or Steven Bernstein in SexMob. With all of them, there’s a kind of special magic: the ability to sound at once like the most virtuosic jazz musicians in the history of this music, while also infusing their expression with a love for popular music in the broadest sense—from cabaret and chanson, to film music, rock, punk, and beyond. The end result often feels uncanny, to the point where you wonder whether you’re hearing postmodern jazz, an arrangement-based deconstruction in an ironic key, or a sincere homage to “beautiful music” that contrasts with the complexity of their artistic identities. Or all of the above. It’s precisely in that listener’s sense of disorientation—the loss of firm ground—that their magic and allure reside, as much as in everything they are capable of when playing the music they love.

What I came to love in Erdmann is his specific, instantly recognizable sound—a combination of classical jazz saxophone virtuosity and something that evokes early rock and soul, or the kind of reeds sound one might imagine in a television late-night show band. This was striking in all the bands of his that I’ve heard, from the aforementioned Das Kapital, to Velvet Revolution, with whom he also performed in Pančevo (the city where I live today), or his current Thérapie de Couple, which I saw three years ago at the jazzahead! festival in Bremen.

At that concert, he presented a “conceptual” band built around French-German relations, where half of the ensemble came from France (Hélène Duret – clarinet, bass clarinet; Théo Ceccaldi – violin; Vincent Courtois – cello) and the other half from Germany (Daniel Erdmann – saxophone; Robert Lucaciu – double bass; Eva Klesse – drums). Even the band’s name, Thérapie de Couple—again, a reference to the relationship between two neighboring countries—highlights Erdmann’s playful artistic vision, further developed through the choice of compositions and their titles, all engaging with this complex historical relationship.

Three years later came the album „I Wanna Hold Your Hand, François“, released by BMC Records, which sounds just as rich as the concert I saw back then. But that richness doesn’t reveal itself immediately—it unfolds through repeated listening, gradually exposing both the layered nature of the ensemble and arrangements, and Erdmann’s desire to allow each musician to shine in the best possible way.

OK, but what does this mean in practice?

The shortest track lasts two and a half minutes, the longest just over seven. By jazz standards, these aren’t particularly extended forms, so one might assume they are compact and “catchy” for potential listeners. Some certainly are—but many unfold quite gradually, almost unhurriedly, as if Erdmann has all the time in the world to win over the listener. We hear this in the opening “Fattal Attraction,” with its long intro, or in “Muskatnuss, Herr Müller,” patiently opened by a double bass solo. Elsewhere, there are compositions whose full melodic potential only reveals itself toward the end, as in the beautiful “Romy.” And then there are miniatures like “On the Road to Werdun” or “Eva in Paris,” which feel like parts of a larger suite while still retaining their own autonomy. Their brevity doesn’t give them the feel of radio singles; rather, they come across as pieces of a more intricate puzzle.

When I mentioned that “each musician is given space,” I was referring to a certain democratic distribution of solo sections, as well as the impression that Erdmann himself doesn’t feel the need to foreground his own playing. As a long-time fan of Théo Ceccaldi, I was, of course, most thrilled by his solos—but everyone has at least a few memorable moments. Take Hélène Duret, who is an absolute star in “Zwei Seelen wohnen ach in meiner Brust”, where she seamlessly move from relaxed swing into free improvisation, while elsewhere she makes other outstanding contributions on clarinet and bass clarinet.

Finally, there are those “simple beautiful songs” such as “Göttingen,” a composition with a particularly telling historical context—performed originaly by singer Barbara in both French and German, and described as “a hymn to Franco-German reconciliation”—or the more recent “Je ne parle pas Français,” originally sung by Namika. In Thérapie de Couple’s interpretations, both carry a strong cabaret-chanson character and a certain patina—another of Erdmann’s recognizable signatures.

Does this combination—on the one hand complex, on the other deeply emotional music—consciously evoke the intricate relationships of couples in therapy, as the album title suggests? A situation that is anything but black and white, instead winding through a web of emotions, thoughts, relationships, passions, and intellectual clashes? If Erdmann intended to convey this complexity—human, historical, and beyond—through the music on this album, he has, at least for me, completely succeeded.

More album reviews on Eurojazzist:

Over the past few weeks, together with my dear editors from Radio Belgrade – Ivana Neimarević and Ksenija Stevanović – I’ve been working on planning the new concert season at the renowned Studio 6 of Radio Belgrade. In fact, this work began toward the end of last year, when we held a meeting at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Belgrade and applied for funding for the 2026 season. On that occasion, we proposed inviting the Austrian HAEZZ Trio to perform in Belgrade, featuring saxophonist Štěpán Flagar, trumpeter Martin Eberle, and double bassist Tobias Vedovelli.

I saw them live in early 2024 at the 3 Tages Jazz festival in Saalfelden and thoroughly enjoyed their concert. When I later noticed their name on the NASOM list for the 2025/2026 cycle (New Austrian Sound of Music – a sponsorship program funded by the Austrian government), I knew there was a good chance we could secure the budget and bring them to Belgrade. That’s exactly what happened – a few weeks ago we received official approval, and we’ve scheduled their concert at Studio 6 for June 10.

I’ll certainly be writing about the HAEZZ a few more times as the concert approaches. For now, I’d like to focus on trumpeter Martin Eberle, who has been very much on my radar lately. In last week’s Randomizer, I wrote about András Dés’s album Decisions We Make, where Eberle is the trumpeter and contributes significantly to the overall quality with his sound. The same applies to HAEZZ, where the full range of his playing really comes into its own.

If I had to give a quick reference point for his musical approach, I’d call him a “European Dave Douglas.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that Eberle plays in the same style, but rather that he evokes a similar emotional response in me as Douglas does. What I appreciate about Eberle – as with Douglas – is that his playing is complex and diverse, yet never excessive. It’s engaging enough to draw my attention specifically to his lines, but always perfectly integrated into the broader musical context. There’s also a fine balance in his playing between the complexity of his trumpet lines and their emotional charge.

When I listen to Eberle, I can’t point to a single defining trait – no particular trick or signature phrase. Instead, what makes him exciting is his multi-layered approach, which allows him to remain compelling across different settings. This is especially true in more intimate ensembles like the HAEZZ Trio, where the trumpet sound has room to fully emerge. Here’s one highlight from 3 Tage Jazz that I recorded on my phone from the second row:

This week, another trumpeter caught my attention – Dave Adewumi, who released his debut album The Flame Beneath the Silence a few weeks ago. Although he’s a young musician, it’s fair to say he was well prepared for his recording debut. Among other things, he has already played with Jason Moran and Dave Douglas on their albums, and this year we’ll see him on tour with Mary Halvorson in her new band Canis Major.

So, he has already gained significant experience alongside some of the leading American musicians of today, and it’s no surprise that his debut features a top-tier lineup – none other than Joel Ross, Linda May Han Oh, and Marcus Gilmore. After a few listens, my impression is that Adewumi could have a similar impact on the scene as Ambrose Akinmusire did some fifteen years ago.

It’s that kind of talent – a captivating player who raises the intensity of the music simply through his presence. In this quartet, it feels like a particularly good choice to collaborate with Ross, whose warm tonal palette provides balance to the overall sound; adding more horns would likely have been too much. In any case, after a few listens, The Flame Beneath the Silence already feels like one of the most interesting jazz albums of the year, once everything is said and done.

Jazz Across Europe

Last year, Hans Falb – founder and director of the Konfrontationen festival in the small Austrian town of Nickelsdorf – passed away. The festival ran for 45 years and was one of the most exciting events dedicated to free jazz and improvised music in Europe. As is often the case when a festival is driven by the immense enthusiasm of a single individual, there was concern within the community about what would happen next. Would the festival continue at all? A few days ago, a social media announcement confirmed that there will at least be a program this year. I’m sure it will be outstanding, as always.

In the meantime, Jazz Cerkno has also announced its full program. I previously mentioned that Mary Halvorson will perform there with her band Canis Major (where we’ll also be able to catch the aforementioned Dave Adewumi); now Ingebrigt Håker Flaten has been announced as well, with his magnificent sextet (EXIT) KNARR, along with Cosmic Ear, whom I wrote about back in February and recently in my interview with Goran Kajfeš. There’s plenty more to look forward to, so if you’re free from May 22–24, here’s a strong recommendation.

One of the festival’s guests will also be Fred Frith, a guitar legend whose influence extends far beyond genre boundaries. I’m especially glad that Frith will also be coming to Belgrade this May for the Ring Ring festival, performing solo. His 2005 concert at the same festival is still remembered, and I believe this one will be just as exciting.

Previously on Eurojazzist:

Evi Filippou is having a remarkable year. She has been selected as this year’s artist-in-residence at the prestigious Moers Festival in Germany. She has also been nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis in two categories: Drums/Percussionist of the Year, and Live Act of the Year for her performance in the duo Filippou & Lucaciu.

A vibraphonist and percussionist originally from Greece, who has long been living and working in Germany, released a compelling new album this March, Love at Last Sight, on the Hungarian label BMC Records. The album is a duo collaboration with bassist Robert Lucaciu, with whom she has been working and performing for the past three years. This release is also the occasion for the interview you are about to read. It is a record that flows effortlessly and invites deep enjoyment, captivating listeners with its unpretentious character. As we listen, we can imagine being in the rehearsal room with them, or hearing them play just for us and a small group of close friends. Love at Last Sight is an album filled with love, warmth, and a genuine sense of intimacy.

Without further delay, here is my conversation with Evi Filippou.

What do you love about Robert Lucaciu’s playing in general, and what about it specifically in the duo format? Do you remember how you first decided to play as a duo, and what you particularly liked about this reduced sonic setting?

For me Robert is like fifteen musicians in one. Not only is he an incredible bass player, I mean technically he can do anything: sing like a soprano, groove like three old school drummers, resonate like a roaring brass band but he is also very inspired. Endless inspiration at improvisation, never plays it safe, always follows through and always has my back. When we met I kind of have decided for myself to not play any more duos because of how fragile they are - three is a band, two are a duo, you know - but after our first rehearsal I forgot all about that and here we are.

The reduced sonic setting is a challenge which helps us grow. I mean, it’s terrifying most of the time (hahaha). But keeps me on my toes and the limitations push us towards different approaches. I feel like with every rehearsal, with every concert, I learn something really valuable. And of course the more I learn, the less I feel like I know. Robert is the perfect duo partner to explore the unknown with.

On the album, we hear several original compositions as well as a number of arrangements. How did you choose pieces by other composers? Some are well known to the wider jazz audience, such as Geri Allen, while others—like the 20th-century Greek composer Leo Rapitis—might be less familiar.

We practice and try out lots of tunes we like, for fun and to see what works for our setting. What is more fun than learning songs together? This album is a collection of pieces we really like and pieces we composed, the common thread is us.

Do you prefer your arrangements to retain the original substance of a composition, or are you more inclined toward deconstruction?

Depends on the day! Funnily enough we never play the same tune with the same arrangement. We always check in the day of the concert and play accordingly. So some days are very structured and some others we only play the ‘’erased’’ versions.

While listening to the album, I had the impression that the music is being created in the moment, regardless of whether these are your own compositions or covers—as if everything emerged spontaneously. Do you lean more toward an open approach, or do you favor thorough preparation before recording?

Our preparation is to learn the scores and tunes as good as possible and then rediscover them at every gig. Robert always says let the song play, you don’t play the song. And I think that is a lot our approach. There’s a lot of talking about life and art, we listen to a lot of music together, we talk about it, we dream together, we practice sometimes things we will never perform and somehow this is our process.

I absolutely believe in that supernatural power that takes over once we let go of that childlike feeling ‘’I wanna be good’’. Kind of letting go of what we think we know of ourselves and reaching for the sky of what we could be. So prepare and then forget all about it.

Tell us more about the recording itself at the Budapest Music Center. To what extent does the space shape what you play? What is your relationship to specific spaces, and to the idea of spatiality when performing music; especially in small ensembles like this one, do you experience the space as a kind of “musical ally,” or perhaps even as a third instrument within the sonic image?

I think what for me is a game changer in recordings but also in every collaboration is not only the spatial setting but the people. I believe that we take crazy magical risks when we feel safe, appreciated and supported, in life and in music. And BMC was all that and more for us. We felt seen, appreciated, trusted, taken care of and had all the help and assistance to make a great record. People tend to underestimate how important the production and the organization is in projects and recordings.

So I would say the space and the people were our musical ally and I’m so glad it is forever documented in this album.

How did you shape the album with Hayden Chisholm as producer? How do you see his contribution, and what did he bring to the record?

Hayden Chisholm was the first person who I admired that told me in a young age ‘’you can be whatever you wanna be’’ and I know that doesn’t sound like a lot but 15 years ago when I started studying and was experiencing sexism and harassment pretty much everywhere, it was all I needed to start doing my thing. Since then he has been a close friend, a collaborator and someone I would always ask for opinions and advice, because he is a daring artist with a very broad collection of skills and styles and I know nobody else who can do so much so good and deep.

In recording situations I find it rather challenging to be the performer and the outside eye. So it was my idea to ask Hayden to be our outside eye, simply check if the takes are good enough and close enough to our vision or throw any constructive feedback from the control room, which he of course did and it was really helpful. Recording can be a stressful situation so someone with a bit of distance is really helpful. No wonder all the records we like from the past had many producers contributing to the final result.

“I Love the Way You’re Breaking My Heart” is an interesting vocal interlude between instrumental tracks. Why this particular piece? Did you have a specific musical quality in mind, the lyrics, its simple beauty—or something else?

I just love this song and most simple songs, jazz standards or greek folk songs, any folk songs actually from all around the world. They are so similar in a way, for me it’s the unshakeable proof that people all around the wold: we are pretty much the same.

I enjoyed reading Chisholm’s texts about your pieces in the liner notes. How do you perceive your own compositions? Are they, for you, “like a dream,” and do you associate certain compositions—or arrangements of others’ pieces—with specific images or cinematic visions?

I think me and Robert are very different that way. He has studied composition and has a lot of experience in writing music. I have always written what I hear and tried to use my knowledge and what I have learned from analyzing other composers to limit my material and shape as good as possible the feeling or image I want to share. ‘’She dreams’’ for example is simply about a girl dreaming, and ‘’your own’’ about the melancholy in the joy of change.

I love arrangements, because I think it is interesting and funny how we all focus on different things even if we love the same songs. So I focus on what I love and explore that space. For example in the song ‘’alma Mia’’ I love the lyrics to the bone and the rhythm of the language so our whole arrangement is about that prosody. Let the song play you kind of thing.

You live and work in Germany, but you come from Greece. How much has your experience in your home country shaped you musically, and to what extent do you still feel part of that scene? It seems that in recent years the Greek jazz scene has been on the rise, with musicians such as yourself, Tania Gianoulli, Petros Klampanis, Andreas Polyzogopoulos…

I left Greece when I was 18, was barely a person yet so I would say that I became an adult and a professional musician in Germany. I admire all these artists you named and many more but I think it is the German scene and Greek musicians that live abroad like Katerina Fotinaki or Antonis Anissegos that shaped me. Their music and approach, completely different but equally influential to me, has opened pathways to my brain.

Still Greece is the country of my childhood and my parents loved Greek music, art poetry and literature so of course it has left a strong mark in me, I mean for me composition is like traveling back to childhood and shedding light to the feelings of joy or darkness. It is something that has do with my family my ancestors, my teachers and telling stories about them. I feel like I carry them all, dead or alive in everything I do. They, their memory and what I think they were, shapes me and the perception of them keeps changing and evolving with time. Wild, isn’t it?

What are your most important current projects besides the duo? What draws you to working with larger ensembles, and how do you approach composition and arranging in that context?

Filippou & Lucaciu and inEvitable are my darlings at the moment. I also enjoy working with Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra a lot because I love being a percussionist. I love large ensembles because first of all the more the merrier, and I come from a classical education where orchestra was the hippest thing. So an orchestra where the percussionist has a lot more to do sounds like a dream to me.

I think the energy that large ensembles and orchestras can create could actually change the world.

Composing for inEvitable extended, my large ensemble so to say, is at the moment about reducing the information to its core and let the incredible players that I am honored to call my bandmates (shout out to Keisuke Matsuno, Arne Braun, Marius Wankel, Zuza Jasinska, Robert Lucaciu, Julius Gawlik, Jim Hart, Tim Hagans) fly high. I go with Mary Oliver’s ‘’always leave some room for the unimaginable’’.

Ever since I started going to jazz concerts—some 25 years ago, give or take—a whole new musical world opened up to me. But at the same time, I also entered a world of new behavioral conventions. In my teenage years, I went to hundreds of rock and metal shows where you could more or less behave however you wanted without anyone giving you a strange look. Then I moved from smoky clubs into concert halls, cultural centers, galleries, and so on. I learned the routine—applause at the end of a solo and at the end of a piece, cheers at the peak of a solo. But also—sit still in your seat, don’t flail around or disturb those next to you. Be polite. Be cultured. Don’t yawn or whisper if the concert is boring.

Don’t fall asleep.

OK, no one ever told me that last part explicitly or implicitly, but it somehow went without saying. It was basic cultural behavior. As we all sit there, dead serious in a concert hall—respectable citizens and „intellectuals“—we’re expected to be at our best in every way. For us, there is no fatigue, no boredom—we must be composed, proper, and seen in our finest light. Especially at a jazz concert, a social event often considered prestigious. This isn’t some dive where you can slump into a corner and doze off after a few too many drinks or whatever.

First stage: Shame

OK. But what happens when you’re really, really tired, and you still want to see your favorite jazz band or musician—you’ve been waiting for that concert for weeks, maybe months?

It was 2009. On the first night of the Belgrade Jazz Festival, I watched the full evening program and got home around 3 AM. Then I went to work early the next morning. At the end of the workday, around 4–5 PM, I stayed in the office to prepare concert reports from the previous night for Jazzin.rs. There wasn’t even time to go home—I went straight to the second night of the festival. One of the stars of the evening was Tomasz Stanko, who had released the fantastic album Dark Eyes just a couple weeks ago. I had listened to it inside out. Stanko himself was a legend, and I loved his previous work. I was genuinely looking forward to that concert.

It was the second concert of the evening, scheduled for 9:30 PM. It didn’t start too late, but during the break between sets I began to feel an overwhelming wave of fatigue and drowsiness. I allowed myself to close my eyes for a moment while waiting for the band to come on stage, but I realized it would only get worse as time went on. I had to focus, somehow, and enjoy it at all costs. This had never happened to me before, which made it even more frustrating.

Once the concert began, what should have been pure enjoyment turned into a struggle to stay alert—to live up to the moment. For myself, for my love of Stanko, for jazz, for the need not to embarrass myself at the most important jazz event in the country, where I had come as a longtime fan and music journalist. It went fine for the first couple of tunes—until the gentle ballads began. Then the agony started: I would suddenly notice that I had drifted off, then force myself to stay awake, and repeat the cycle until the end of the concert. I felt disappointed. I shared that feeling only with close friends—I didn’t go around telling people that it had defined my evening.

OK, I told myself. You’re not that young anymore—it’s normal.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling of shame.

Second stage: Acceptance and Reconciliation

I pushed it all aside and carried on with my jazz life at full speed. I attended festivals across Serbia, occasionally traveled to Croatia, and even went to Austria for the Jazzfestival Saalfelden for the first time. Life was good—everything was in place. Then autumn came, along with another intense run of local jazz festivals I covered for Jazzin.rs and a few other magazines. In practice, that meant watching entire festival programs—both what I enjoyed and what interested me less. I approached the work enthusiastically and tried to do it as honestly as possible.

But of course, if you go to festivals every weekend—often from Thursday through Sunday—fatigue will catch up with you. And then it happened again. This time, the “victim” was a concert by Ron Carter at the Novi Sad Jazz Festival in 2011. A living legend of jazz in Serbia! To be fair, I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the albums he was releasing at the time, but still—a legend is a legend. You show up, you pay your respects, and so on. That evening, Ron Carter was third on the bill. The main program started at 8 PM, and by my estimate his set would begin around 11 PM. Not too bad.

However, the breaks between sets dragged on, and Ron Carter didn’t come on until around midnight—at least as far as I remember now. I could feel the fatigue creeping in. I knew what was coming. The atmosphere was unusual: despite being by far the biggest name on the program, the audience had largely dispersed by that point. The trio of Norwegian guitarist Gisle Torvik had drawn a packed and enthusiastic crowd, but for Ron Carter—not so much. I attributed that to the audience profile: not die-hard jazz fans, but people simply looking to spend an evening with a suitable cultural program. After two concerts, they had no reason to stick around for a midnight set.

The concert began. Carter was joined by Mulgrew Miller on piano and Russell Malone on guitar. Their music was beautiful and soothing. Perfect for closing your eyes and letting go… which, of course, is exactly what happened. I was sitting far enough from the stage and thought—they won’t see me, it’s not like I’m being provocative. The audience was scattered across an oversized hall. As much as I respected Ron Carter, his music with the Golden Striker Trio didn’t mean as much to me as Stanko’s. There was no self-imposed pressure that I “had to enjoy it.” I closed my eyes, and everything fell into place. I was relaxed. The music was beautiful. The experience was slightly displaced from the usual focused, eyes-open listening—but I wouldn’t say I “missed” the concert. It was simply different.

Third stage: A story to laugh about

A year later, I visited the Jazz Festival Saalfelden for the second time. For those who haven’t been, it’s important to note that the program runs all day—from 9 AM to a few hours past midnight. If you’re a die-hard enthusiast and want to catch as many concerts as possible, it will take a toll on your physical and mental state. As the festival progresses, you inevitably become saturated, no matter how fantastic the program is. I’ve never been to the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, but from what I’ve read on Substack, it seems to present a similar kind of “challenge” even for the most dedicated listeners.

In the small hall of Kunsthaus Nexus, the band Steamboat Switzerland was performing. As it turns out, part of that concert is available on YouTube, so I don’t need to explain too much about what kind of music it was—see below. Some parts of the performance were quite loud and explosive, which was one of the band’s defining qualities. Every time I had dozed off at a jazz concert before, it seemed tied to gentle trumpet or piano tones—music that naturally invites sleep. Here, everything was bursting and exploding, while I was “sleeping like a baby.” Well, that might be an exaggeration—but it was similar to the Ron Carter concert, even though the music there was far more melodic.

Later, I talked about it with a fellow journalist who had experienced the same thing at that very concert. Not because we didn’t like the band, but because fatigue caught up with both of us at the same moment. We found it hilariously funny that we had dozed off during such a performance—one where you’d think that would be impossible. It became a great anecdote, and in that shared recognition—that it had happened to someone else—the sense of shame finally disappeared.

One of the musicians from that concert is a subscriber to my Substack, and I hope he won’t mind if he’s made it this far into the newsletter. If it wasn’t already clear, situations like this often happen out of an overwhelming desire—shared by us jazz enthusiasts—to see as many concerts as possible, even when it exceeds our physical limits. Sometimes it passes quietly, and sometimes it leads to moments that surpass our wildest expectations.

Epilogue

After these experiences, I began to view sleeping at concerts with much more calm and understanding. It can happen at a “boring” concert, but it can just as easily happen during a fantastic performance by a band you love. Of course, it’s always better to be awake, well-rested, and fully present. Over the years, I’ve learned to manage my energy more rationally—not to see everything at all costs, but to stay as fresh as possible for the concerts that matter most to me. But we’re only human—ordinary people of flesh and blood—and there’s no need to beat ourselves up for occasionally behaving in a very human way, even if it might seem inappropriate at first glance. Especially when it happens out of the most sincere, wholehearted desire to experience art beyond all limits.

At the Pančevo Jazz Festival last autumn, even before the first concert had begun, I noticed a senior citizen who had already closed his eyes and drifted off somewhere. I smiled to myself, with understanding, and silently wished him a pleasant evening.

This week, a few albums have been on repeat in my playlists—records that I’m not sure I would strictly call jazz, yet they exist somewhere around its edges. It might be instrumental music leaning into ambient territory, but without elements of jazz instrumentation or improvisation; it might involve improvisation, but without the familiar jazz harmonies; or it could be musicians coming from a jazz background, playing something quite different, and so on.

At first, I thought—OK, let’s move on, let’s see what else could fit the Randomizer. But I paused and realized that these very albums might actually be the central theme. Because why not? The very notion of “jazz” today encompasses all sorts of things it didn’t in the sixties, seventies, and beyond. One could even speak of the “death of genre” as a concept in contemporary music, or at least of the way new generations of listeners perceive the idea of genre. In the end, it’s always a pleasure to write about good music—or simply to listen to it—whatever we choose to call it.

Iztok Koren & Raphael Rogiński are a compelling duo who recently released the album Nocturnal Consolations on the excellent label Instant Classic. I first heard of Rogiński when he played in the band Hera, led at the time by clarinetist Wacław Zimpel—once a leading figure in the Polish avant-garde jazz scene, who later moved away from the “jazz genre” into different musical territories. Since then, guitarist Raphael Rogiński has continued to appear in various projects that combine an alternative sensibility, improvisation, and ethnically rooted music from different—mostly European—meridians.

Iztok Koren is a member of the outstanding Slovenian trio Širom, whose music ventures into the realm of “imaginary folklore.” On this year’s album, Koren’s list of instruments includes banjos, guembri, steel drum, kalimba, effects, harmonium, and analog synth. I’m especially glad that the duo will perform in Belgrade on April 17 as part of the Fields Festival. I warmly recommend everything the two of them do, as well as the Instant Classic label itself.

Joe Harvey-Whyte & Geir Sundstøl have released the album Langeleik on the Norwegian label Hubro Music, which has intrigued me for years with its genre-transgressing output—from avant-garde and ambient jazz toward music that resists easy definition. Sundstøl, like the aforementioned Koren, plays a range of instruments, though pedal steel guitar is his most recognizable voice. Joe Harvey-Whyte also plays pedal steel, along with acoustic guitar, Optigan, and shruti box, supported here by a full band. In such a setting, an “Americana vibe” is almost inevitable, with the most natural jazz reference being Bill Frisell. But this should be taken loosely, as the music moves into new and unpredictable territories starting from these initial associations.

Alongside these two albums, I’ve only just begun exploring Joshua Abrams’ Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation. Abrams is known from Natural Information Society, a group that uniquely blends avant-garde and spiritual jazz with influences from North Africa and American minimalism in the lineage of Steve Reich, among others. His current album consists of a single piece, “Pulse Meridian Foliation,” lasting 36 minutes. At this point, I still have no idea how to describe it without resorting to copy-pasting someone else’s review online; for now, it simply remains “good instrumental music,” at least until I can fully process what I’ve heard.

András Dés

One of the first things I noticed after arriving on Substack is how few European jazz musicians are present. American musicians such as Ethan Iverson, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, Jakob Garchik, and Sam Newsome (just to name a few) already have a solid Substack following and write thoughtfully on a range of engaging topics. Many others are there as well. But Europeans—barely. I understand that musicians are generally tired of the constant pressure to maintain an online presence and engage with their audience across every possible platform—Substack might just feel like one more obligation. Europeans are already widely active on Instagram, and perhaps not even fully aware of Substack, which still feels like a predominantly American platform.

The first European I noticed was Dave Stapleton and his Substack; it’s also worth noting that he is both a musician and a label head, with Edition Records now among the leading jazz labels globally. After that, there was little to be found—until I came across the account of Hungarian drummer András Dés.

He publishes a newsletter once a month and writes beautifully; I always appreciate it when a musician is also a strong writer. But more importantly, Dés is a very interesting bandleader who has recently released the album Decisions We Make with a quartet featuring Martin Eberle (trumpet), Kenji Herbert (guitar), and Philipp Nykrin (piano), out on the impressive Budapest-based BMC Records.

Broadly speaking, this is a contemporary jazz album. What I find particularly interesting is that even after three or four listens, I still haven’t fully retained specific tracks or themes—I don’t get that immediate “aha, this is my favorite tune” or “that was an amazing solo” moment. And yet, I keep coming back to it. It feels more like a complex novel—with an introduction, development, multiple narrative strands, and an epilogue—than a collection of short stories, if we were to draw a comparison with literature. Or, in Netflix terms, this is a slow burn album. With a bit of patience, it reveals music that is emotionally accessible, yet layered and dramaturgically engaging.

In any case, it’s well worth reading what András himself has to say about the album in his latest newsletter—I highly recommend it.

To briefly return to Europeans on Substack—I hope their presence will continue to grow, as this seems like a platform where they can build more meaningful relationships with potential listeners. And also because I would genuinely like to read their thoughts and experiences on music and life; many of them certainly have something worth saying—and writing.

Eurojazzist recap – also published this week:

Goran Kajfeš has been among my favorite jazz musicians for a long time. He is involved in numerous projects: he leads Tropiques and Subtropic Arkestra under his own name, and we’ve also heard him with Oddjob, Cosmic Ear, Fire! Orchestra, Angles 9, Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra… In short, he is a musician everyone enjoys playing with, and as a composer and arranger he has a refined style at the crossroads of groove/repetition, a retro sound with a touch of the seventies, free jazz, post-bop, and so on.

I previously mentioned him on Eurojazzist in a review of a Cosmic Ear concert, which we will return to later. As for me personally, I first heard him in 2010 on the album Clint by Oddjob. This album was specific precisely for what its title suggests – it featured interpretations of themes from films starring Clint Eastwood. Here we encounter him as a band member, and over the course of his career he has established himself as a strong “team player.” His contribution has always been noticeable, but never imposing – he is not “the guy who steals the show.”

However, he released his first album, Home, back in 2000. “I had a pretty clear idea about the music I wanted to record working in an electronic environment. So, in one way, it was a kind of a pretty extended writing and recording process in the studio, inspired by sound and a mix of my musical inspirations and my roots. I wanted to explore and find ways around the traditional jazz form,” says Goran about his early discographic beginnings.

We return to the album Clint, as well as his later work with Subtropic Arkestra. Although these are stylistically and structurally somewhat different bands, both are characterized by arrangements of compositions by other authors. Goran’s choices are often unconventional, and the interpretations carry a certain “vintage” flavor. In that sense, I was particularly intrigued by how he chooses the pieces he performs. Are these compositions “easier” to arrange, or perhaps precisely those that, through deeper reinterpretation and reconstruction, gain a new shape?

The Swedish trumpeter explains: “It always starts with a direct love for the piece of music, but it was always important for me that I could hear (in my head) the group making an interpretation of it that is connected to the group’s identity and sound. I usually preferred to look for music that wasn’t musically too close to what we were doing. Once I tried to do a version of Louis Moholo, and it sounded way too close to the original and pretty bad, actually, so it ended up in the waste bin. Some recordings are so brilliant in form, sound, and feeling that they shouldn’t be touched, I guess”-

The names of his best-known bands directly evoke tropical landscapes: Tropiques and Subtropic Arkestra. At first glance, one might say that Kajfeš is, in one way or another, fascinated by Africa.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that it is directly connected to a region, more to dreams of being somewhere else, connected to the temperature and mood in my music,” he responds. “I always loved the idea of traveling with the help of music, taking me or us to unknown places. With Tropiques I early on felt that the music had a strong connection to nature, so the name just felt right. And also, Tropiques was a group formed out of certain elements in Subtropic Arkestra that I wanted to explore more deeply and zoom into. So the names were connected in that way, and have actually been a problem sometimes, because the groups get mixed up even if they don’t sound alike.”

During our conversation, we arrive at the point that he first fell in love with African music through Fela Kuti. “And after that it was like opening Pandora’s box – everything from Ethiopian music, Moroccan Gnawa, desert blues, kora from Mali, and yes, basically a never-ending well of extraordinary music that has inspired me in many ways and whose traces you can find in almost all my work”, he says, adding an important experience of playing with Majid Bekkas. “It was a big moment for me, meeting a musician with deep knowledge of music from many countries in Africa: Morocco, Mali, Mauritania, and others.”

Although I have been listening to Goran Kajfeš’s music for years, the idea for this interview came to me after watching a livestream of a Cosmic Ear concert at the Vienna club Porgy & Bess a little over a month ago. On that occasion, I wrote:

As a listener, I had the full sense of witnessing a collective musical statement, without dominant leaders or highlighted soloists, however much I may value some of them as improvisers. Through a series of small gestures or musical figures, Cosmic Ear builds a sound that is more important than any one of them individually, yet at the same time remains intimate, almost private – without the pomp and spectacle one might expect from a lineup of this magnitude.

Now is also the right moment to bring up Cosmic Ear as a topic, as it is his most recent project, featuring some truly outstanding musicians – for me, particularly significant is Mats Gustafsson, while for the band itself the veteran Christer Bothén is of crucial importance. We are aware of his historical experience with Don Cherry, and he is also at the center of the stage in concert settings. “Christer is a force of nature. He is an incredible musician that I felt I had an immediate connection to. Many things in music that I was searching for, he had already explored (laughing). I often think that if I can keep the curiosity and urge to explore and evolve music when I am his age, I will feel blessed. A true inspiration.”

In this band, as in some other projects, Goran Kajfeš also plays keyboards, which again brings us back to that “vintage” aesthetic. I was interested in what kind of relationship he has with this instrument, given that he is primarily a trumpeter. “I wouldn’t see myself as a keyboard player, but I am obsessed with synthesizers and that universe of sound. I spend a lot of time in the studio working with modular synthesizers, and that has opened my ears to hearing in a new way. And also I have used it as a compositional tool, that suggests ideas I feel I wouldn’t be able to come up with otherwise,” explains Kajfeš.

Up to this point, we have already mentioned several overlapping collaborations: musicians on the Swedish scene naturally intersect across numerous projects and play in one another’s bands. All of this gives me the impression that the Swedish scene is quite homogeneous, with a strong collective spirit and mutual support. Still, that is only one side of the coin. “Yes, we are a bunch of musicians who inspire each other to move forward with the music, but I would still say that many days you are by yourself making decisions.”

We now slowly move on to “economic topics” and the ever-relevant issue of the sustainability of a jazz musician’s life. In the Balkans, we tend to view Sweden as a welfare state, a place where musicians of different stylistic orientations can feel and live relatively comfortably. While support for non-commercial musical genres does exist, every country in Europe certainly has its own specific circumstances – not to mention individuals who navigate these systems as best they can.

“I have always loved doing many different things, so that has made my life easier in that way,” Goran said. “Writing music for movies, TV, theatre, dance, producing and playing on pop albums, and so on, has helped me make a living from music. And I have always spent part of that money on realizing my own music. But also, we still have some public funding in Sweden, and that has helped me a lot in working with my different solo projects. It would indeed be much harder to make that happen otherwise. I am very grateful for that support.”

In recent years, musicians’ income from streaming services has been a major topic, as well as the question of how artists might connect more directly with their listeners. It is clear that revenue from Spotify and similar platforms is marginal, and the question is often raised: what alternatives work best, and how do musicians build a “fan base” willing to spend money on concert tickets, LPs, and merchandise. “Well, as many of us know by now, streaming generates zero money. It is hard to break even on music that I release, but I see some light on the horizon: more and more listeners realize that if they buy music from me at concerts or on Bandcamp, they help us – musicians – to release new music.”

In such an uncertain economic environment, with low income from albums, the role of record labels also comes into question. Is the best label the one that sells the most, or are other qualities at play? Goran Kajfeš long had his own label, Headspin Recordings, but as he admits, it was too much work. He was losing valuable time needed for composing, playing, practicing, and life itself. “With the last Tropiques album, I decided to move on with another label. And We Jazz was an easy choice, as I felt Matti Nives had a great appreciation and understanding for my work. As I had my own label, I know what it means to run one, so I think that makes our cooperation easier, finding creative ways to work everything out.”

We conclude the conversation with the “eternal question” of what jazz is. Many years ago, when I spoke with Mats Gustafsson, I mentioned that he was one of my favorite “jazz” musicians – and he was not particularly pleased with the genre label. So I was curious to hear what Goran Kajfeš thinks about this topic.

“I prefer not really thinking in genres. I love music that is hard to label. Music is so much greater than that. And even if I have studied, loved, and played jazz since I was young, I find more inspiration in other art forms and nature these days.”

A few years ago, the Finnish ensemble Uusi Aika released their self-titled album, which left a very strong impression on me with its introspective take on spiritual jazz, enriched by elements of Indian music and a touch of Japanese ambient sound through the use of the shakuhachi. It was a cohesive record—at once highly melodic and free—featuring a particularly striking, almost epic culmination in the composition “Henget.”

Somehow, I missed that they released a new album last November, so this review arrives four months “late.” Since I closely follow new releases from We Jazz Records, I didn’t notice that the new album, Luurankolauluja, came out on a different label, Puro Recordings, which I wasn’t familiar with until now. A great opportunity to explore their catalog as well.

Luurankolauluja, the second album by Uusi Aika, opens with Luurankouni, a shakuhachi kata rooted in ancient tradition and named after a poem by the 15th-century Japanese Zen poet Ikkyū.

This is a quote from the album’s Bandcamp description. Based on such an introduction, one might assume that Uusi Aika continue in the same vein as their debut. The core lineup remains largely the same: Amanda Blomqvist (drums, percussion, vocals), Otto Eskelinen (wind instruments, synths), Antero Mentu (guitar, sitar), and Tapani Varis (double bass). Compared to the debut, Johannes Sarjasto (piano, synth, accordion, vocals) is no longer present, while Antero Mentu has expanded his role on guitar. The guest musicians include Natalia Castrillón (harp), Pauliina Koivusaari (violin, vocals), Sirja Puurtinen (violin), Sakari Heikka (viola), Senni Eskelinen (piano), and Teemu Into (synthesizers).

Already on the second track, “Vattnet,” we hear a clear evolution: the band leans more strongly into female vocals that bring an indie/alternative/folk sensibility—at once intimate and restrained, yet also elevated and lush. Some albums are defined by their overall sensibility and sense of wholeness; others by standout tracks—the ones you want to add to a playlist, send to friends, or share online. Uusi Aika possess both qualities, though on this new album they seem even more attuned to crafting memorable singles. This is evident in the following “Ikipetäjä”, with its echoes of folk sensibility and background vocals, and especially in “Sammaltukka”, where the sitar—one of the band’s trademarks—enters into a playful dialogue with vocalizations framing the central improvisation.

And just as I thought, “okay, this is their direction on the new album”, in comes, of all things, the surf-jazz miniature “Tanssivat käärmeet”, and suddenly the entire record takes on a distinctly playful character. Not that it wasn’t playful before—depending on how loosely you interpret that term—but now the band gives a clearer wink, inviting us to relax and come back down to earth from the heights they had taken us to with their spiritual-folk vignettes.

At the very end, Uusi Aika treat us once again to an extended, almost cinematic piece “Turyasangitananda”, with lush strings and arrangements that evoke an almost symphonic sensibility, combined with the sitar and the band’s spiritual jazz core.

In the 21st century, jazz eclecticism has evolved to the point where describing any band as a “mixture of styles” feels almost worn out. I’ve gotten used to it. It’s increasingly rare for a band to genuinely surprise me with its stylistic combinations while still keeping them coherent and accessible - opening up a new emotional space while maintaining a musical anchor we can hold onto, throughout an engaging listening journey. In that sense, Uusi Aika are a true gem - a band capable of bringing both tears and a smile. Well done.

If you enjoyed this article, here are some recent Eurojazzist reviews:

A few days ago, I saw that Flea had landed on the cover of the new issue of DownBeat. I hadn’t planned at all to write any piece about his new album “Honora”, but I thought it would be OK to publish a Substack note in which I would initiate a debate about placing his project on the cover of a traditional jazz magazine. I suggested the dilemma of whether this was a great editorial move that increases broader public interest in jazz, or perhaps an injustice toward musicians from the jazz field, who already struggle to achieve that level of visibility—even without Flea “jumping into” their niche.

The very first comment made me regret it, because it came across as if I were that conservative traditionalist bothered by Flea being on a jazz cover. That wasn’t my idea at all, nor is it my position. But no matter how much I tried to frame the dilemma “neutrally”, I realized that the questions themselves already contain an “interpretation.” Maybe they even verge on rage bait. I responded politely to the Substacker who left the comment, trying to explain my position and what I meant. But after a short reflection, I deleted the entire post. Something just didn’t feel right in the way I had set the tone.

In the meantime, the album was released and became available on streaming platforms; I gave it a listen—it’s OK. The jazz crew playing on it (Jeff Parker, Anna Butterss, etc.) is legit. Thom Yorke is also there, always a welcome presence for me, as one of the guests. Flea is a a great musician, regardless of genre. And a cool guy. I recently enjoyed his presence in an episode of the excellent docu-fiction TV program Painting with John, in which musician-actor-painter John Lurie paints and contemplates life. Flea was his guest in a staged episode that functions as a kind of homage to the film Down by Law (Flea and Lurie end up in a prison cell for vaguely Kafkaesque reasons, where they reminisce about their adventures).

All in all, I’m generally very sympathetic to the influx of pop and rock culture into jazz, especially when it involves figures with strong artistic credibility. A new album by Laurie Anderson with Sexmob is also coming soon—a fantastic collaboration between a legendary artist and an iconic jazz band. Both albums are released by Nonesuch Records, which already has an excellent ear for contemporary jazz. The very fact that they included Mary Halvorson in their catalog speaks volumes about their bold vision, outstanding curatorial team, and overall concept. Jazz, in its essence, is inclusive rather than exclusive, and it’s not a bad idea to keep reminding ourselves of that. That’s where I stand when it comes to Flea’s place in the jazz landscape.

New Listens

WeJazz Records recently sent over a great album to be released in May: the group is Kiri Ra! and the album nen. The lineup includes Lau Nau, Linda Fredriksson, and Matti Bye. Linda Fredriksson recorded a fantastic album Juniper a few years ago, so I was eager to hear what she would do next. I’ve heard Lau Nau on an album with Jonah Parzen-Johnson, so I’m somewhat familiar with her work—in a positive way.

This album is minimalist, unpretentious, and ambient—there will be time for a proper review as the release date approaches. For now, just a heads up.

Ben Wendel has released an intriguing edition for Edition Records: BaRcoDe – electroacoustic album for saxophone and mallets (vibraphone and percussion). The music is very accessible at its core and highlights all of Wendel’s playing qualities, while the unusual instrumentation brings a fresh arranging perspective. For now, I’m really enjoying it while driving!

Pianist Marilyn Crispell and double bassist Anders Jormin have a new duo release Memento for ECM Records, which I’ve only just started listening to, but it’s promising so far. Ideal for a home setting.

International Anthem is a label I follow regularly—they now have a very compelling new album by Gregory Uhlmann – Extra Stars. It’s a very interesting crossover between jazz elements and the broader field of contemporary instrumental music.

I’ve only just scratched the surface of all these albums and don’t yet know how I’ll rank them after more listening. But I can say that, for now, they are worth attention and dedicated time.

Jazz Across Europe

I really want to see Vega Trails live. I loved their debut Tremors in the Static, and I also grew fond of its successor Sierra Tracks. The core chamber-jazz lineup consists of double bassist Milo Fitzpatrick and saxophonist Jordan Smart, with occasional expansions. I also enjoy their other bands, such as Portico Quartet, Mammal Hands, and Sunda Arc.

While checking where they’re touring this year, I came across the Vilnius Mama Jazz festival in Lithuania. As a jazz listener from Serbia, when I travel abroad I usually look toward Western Europe or the nearest neighboring countries. The fact is, the Baltic region has never really been on my radar, primarily for logistical reasons.

Be that as it may, I looked up the program of this year’s Vilnius Mama Jazz festival because I saw that Vega Trails are playing there. And there was plenty to see—Mammal Hands are also on the lineup, along with Mary Halvorson (with her new band Canis Major), Tom Skinner, Nils Petter Molvær, Vladimir Tarasov, and Cécile McLorin Salvant. A very focused program across three days, from May 22 to 24. Whether I go or not, I wholeheartedly recommend this program. I’m putting Vilnius Mama Jazz on my radar as a destination worth visiting in the coming years.

This year, on the Third Program of Radio Belgrade, we launched a new series within my show Jazz, in which we aim to present not necessarily avant-garde, but perhaps unusual, atypical albums from the history of the genre—records that stand out for their originality, yet were not cornerstones of jazz nor did they reshape it in revolutionary ways. OK, this concept isn’t easy to sum up in a few words, but that’s not so important. In fact, the first idea that came to mind for opening the series was „On the Corner“ by Miles Davis. Then I thought we should play “those kinds of albums” on the radio—whatever that might mean. My radio editor Ksenija agreed, and that’s how we got started.

The following month, we had a special broadcast marking the passing of Michel Portal, so we postponed the next installment of the series until March. I began thinking about albums from the 1960s and 1970s that had left a strong personal impression on me, and the first that came to mind was „Extrapolation“ by John McLaughlin.

I wrote the radio introduction in one breath; it follows in the next four paragraphs.

John McLaughlin seemed destined for great things from the very start of his career. Already by the late 1960s, he was participating in the creation of key fusion jazz albums—Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way and then the epochal Bitches Brew. During the 1970s, he became one of the most important musicians of the fusion era, as well as a pioneer of the world music scene through his work with Shakti, where he explored the connections between jazz and Indian traditional music. To this day, he retains the status of one of the greatest living legends of jazz.

Before refining his recognizable style in the realm of jazz crossover, he recorded his debut as a bandleader as early as the beginning of 1969: „Extrapolation“ with his quartet. In this pivotal year for the development of fusion jazz, the genre’s postulates had not yet been clearly established, and experimentation and the free exploration of common ground between jazz and rock took precedence over the commercial shaping of a new musical direction. It is precisely in that spirit that we can view „Extrapolation“—as an expression of unrestrained musical ideas and an album ahead of its time.

Alongside John McLaughlin, the key musician on the album is baritone saxophonist John Surman, who would himself go on to become one of the central figures of European jazz and the ECM aesthetic. A particular curiosity is that bassist Dave Holland was originally scheduled to appear on the album; however, he had to withdraw after receiving a call from Miles Davis to come to the United States, and was replaced by the now lesser-known Brian Odgers. The quartet is completed by drummer Tony Oxley, who would go on to have a very successful career on the European jazz scene.

On this album, neither John McLaughlin nor John Surman sound as we know them today; at this stage of their careers, their playing is urgent but also somewhat raw, unpolished. This impression is reinforced by the natural production, which captures the spirit and imperfections of live performance. Their music, in that sense, also embodies the spirit of alternative rock and the New York jazz eclecticism that would only fully emerge decades later. Although the album was well received by critics, circumstances prevented the quartet from continuing its work, and John McLaughlin himself developed his music in a different direction. Still, „Extrapolation“ secured an important place in jazz history as a document of the birth of a new music that would define the genre in the decades to come.

For the purposes of this text, I revisited some factual details. It turns out the album was recorded in January 1969. „In a Silent Way“, which marks Miles Davis’s definitive step into fusion, was recorded on February 18 of the same year. Of course, neither Miles Davis nor John McLaughlin were the only musicians exploring the intersections of jazz and rock in the late 1960s. It is impossible to determine with factual precision “who was first,” nor is it a competition. But what struck me were John McLaughlin’s musical ideas, which were undoubtedly authentic—especially his approach to melodies that were accessible, while the playing itself remained “dirty.” It feels almost like an alternative band from the late 1980s, or one of the New York jazz postmodernists, or even a band from the neo–jazz-rock wave that gained momentum in the 2000s—as a departure from the virtuosity of classic fusion.

On this occasion, I’m skipping his next album „Devotion“, which didn’t resonate with me as much, and moving straight to „My Goal’s Beyond“. It’s incredible how quickly things were happening in music at the time! Only a few years had passed since the idea of jazz fusion had taken hold among musicians, and the range of albums released—for example, by 1973—presented a fantastic richness of new and interesting musical ideas. If I try to reflect on what happened in jazz between, say, 2018 and 2023, I can’t draw any grand conclusions. A lot of good music was recorded, but within already established stylistic idioms.

Already on the album cover, we see that the bandleader is now called Mahavishnu John McLaughlin. Among the instruments featured on the album are the tanpura and tabla. McLaughlin plays acoustic guitar. There is also violin, as well as percussion. And there is an all-star jazz lineup—the full list of musicians can be found on the album’s Wikipedia page.

The album is divided into two parts, or vinyl sides: one featuring this fantastic band, and the other consisting of solo guitar by John McLaughlin. Although this part of the album is also interesting, the two pieces titled “Peace 1” and “Peace 2” represent the essence of the album and its core.

A few years later, John McLaughlin would perform with Shakti, marking a clearly defined fusion of jazz and Indian music. But here, he was only beginning to flirt with the Indian sound, and it had not yet taken precedence. At the same time, it cannot be said to be merely decorative—a superficial flourish or a trick picked up along the way. John McLaughlin played on the famous „Bitches Brew“ and contributed decisively to its identity, yet he chose not to directly capitalize on that for his own career. At this point, we have many conclusions about what this album is not—but not necessarily what it is. Which is precisely its strength; avoiding obvious genre classifications and labels.

„My Goal’s Beyond“ is an incredibly meticulous and detailed album, very precise and thoughtful even when the musicians are improvising. The production is very smart, and the instruments are carefully placed within the sound image, so that everything is clearly audible. The early 1970s were a time of increasing studio manipulation, and in that sense, John McLaughlin succeeded in recording an album with solid audiophile qualities—but above all, musical ones.

There are a few more albums from John McLaughlin’s later career that I have enjoyed listening to. But these two have stayed closest to my heart. They were created in exciting times, when the world of traditional jazz was struggling for market survival, and the brave new world of fusion had not yet established its definitive identity. They may not have decisively changed the course of jazz, but „Extrapolation“ and „My Goal’s Beyond“ still sound fresh and relevant after several decades of the genre’s (completed?) evolution.

The end of last year and the beginning of this one have been a busy period for Jakob Bro’s label Loveland Music. Alongside several of his own releases in various formations, an interesting album also came out by bassist Thomas Morgan, and in January this year, by the legendary Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg. And not just any release, but a solo album, with a few discreet guest appearances by musicians he knows well and holds dear.

Mikkelborg is a major name in his own right. Still, I begin this review with the label, which is carving out a very interesting direction. Those familiar with Jakob Bro’s work know that he spent years releasing albums for ECM Records. Before Gefion, the album that marked the start of his ECM odyssey in 2015, he had already released several albums on Loveland. He then set aside his own label for a time, only to return to it recently with remarkable enthusiasm and a clear concept.

The latest batch of releases partly builds on the ECM aesthetic, but develops it in a more experimental performance and production direction, already taking on the contours of something we might call a “Loveland sound.” Or at least, that’s my subjective impression. In any case, the concept behind the album recorded by Mikkelborg emerged from his conversations with Jakob, with whom he has collaborated for a long time.

From the very beginning, and the opening track “At Tænde Lys,” what caught my attention was the way Mikkelborg approaches the solo format on trumpet or flugelhorn. Over the course of three minutes, we hear only his short passages — sequences of long, open tones, followed by intervals of silence. If you have good headphones or listen more closely, you’ll notice that the silence is not entirely complete — Mikkelborg plays with plenty of reverb, and each phrase trails off into a lingering resonance, until the instrument returns in full presence. At its core, however, this is an interplay with “air” that carries a specific atmosphere — seriousness, dignity, but also warmth and deep emotion.

Although our first instinct might be to label this format as “experimental,” or more mildly “atmospheric,” it contains something deeper and more fundamental — something closer to human emotional experience than to an intellectual one. If we step away from thinking in terms of “jazz” or “improvisation” conventions, we can imagine a solo trumpet or flugelhorn playing, for instance, a hymn at an important event. Or an emotional melody at a memorial service. Mikkelborg’s lines sound exactly like that: elevated and emotionally potent. The pauses, in which we “catch our breath,” allow us to absorb our emotional experience, to process what we have heard, and to be ready for what comes next. It is almost as if we are listening to nonverbal poetry. Between two lines, we reflect on the previous one, feeling anticipation for the unknown that awaits us.

At times, Mikkelborg overdubs additional instruments or soundscapes; at others, he is joined by fellow musicians. In another of the album’s highlights, the track “Wind”, we hear wind chimes (by Jakob Bro) accompanying the trumpet and establishing an exciting sonic counterpoint through minimalist means. Elsewhere, that support becomes more expansive — as when a piano enters in “Port”, bringing a new emotional layer to the music. One of my personal listening favorites is “Spring”, at the very center of the album, where Mikkelborg plays only the piano — just as convincingly as his primary instrument. In the end, we no longer think in terms of “what a musician can record alone”, but surrender to a rich sonic palette without preconception — to the music as such.

It is not easy to say so much with such limited musical means. Only the greatest masters can do that — and Palle Mikkelborg is one of them.

After “taking a break” from listening to new music last week, this time I went methodically—following bits of information about recent releases that I came across through various channels, as well as download links sent out by labels. One of the regulars among them is ACT Music, and in their latest batch the new album by the young pianist Joel Lyssarides, Late on Earth, stood out. His music has been catching my attention for a while now. Lyssarides is a highly virtuosic pianist, which always carries the risk that albums turn into demonstrations of technical superiority. Still, I don’t think he has crossed that line; the compositions and arrangements sound beautiful and coherent—making for a solid mainstream piano trio experience. There’s also a new Lars Danielsson Liberetto release Echomyr—this is a band I’ve been following in its various incarnations for years. I skip an album here and there, then listen to the next one, and so on—whenever I feel like hearing genuinely beautiful and accessible music. Both releases should be out in April.

I haven’t started listening yet, but I’m especially looking forward to the first album by the lineup Daniel Erdmann’s Thérapie de Couple – I Wanna Hold Your Hand, François, which will be released in April by BMC Records. Daniel Erdmann is a wonderful saxophonist I first heard in the witty ensemble Das Kapital. Later there was Velvet Revolution—both groups performed in Serbia. I like his playing style, which balances pure beauty and playful phrasing, between lyrical melodies, meaningful virtuosity, and hints of free style. That back-and-forth between the serious and the ironic—always wrapped in thoughtful arrangements and excellent bands—makes him a very exciting bandleader. And in the new band is also my favorite violinist—Théo Ceccaldi.

A few days ago I saw that We Jazz Records from Finland—one of my few favorite labels—has launched a compilation series titled Friends and Neighbors. As they put it: “We select music from artists and labels we love and, with their approval, share these discoveries in the form of a free monthly digital compilation with all We Jazz Bandcamp monthly subscribers.” The first track on the compilation is by the Finnish band Uusi Aika, whose self-titled debut album I loved. Somehow I missed that they released a new album, Luurankolauluja, at the end of last year. The first album could roughly be described as introspective spiritual jazz with touches of Indian spirituality. The second is somewhat more eclectic and shows a band continuing to explore the possibilities of its expression. I’ve only listened once so far, but I’m looking forward to spending more time with this music. Of course, this paragraph is also a recommendation for the entire compilation, as I have quite a lot of trust in We Jazz. The listening and download link is here.

I should say that there were also a couple of albums on the playlist by musicians I’m generally interested in, but I was disappointed this time. I considered whether to mention them at all, but I’ll skip it. Like some other jazz writers I’ve read, I think that in this abundance of never-more-accessible music, there’s no need to spend time on what (we think) doesn’t work, but rather to focus on a positive approach.

Deutscher Jazzpreis

Sometimes I get the impression that most of the major and best-known annual jazz polls for albums and musicians tend to stand still, rotating the same names by inertia—even if many of those artists certainly deserve their leading positions. That’s why the Deutscher Jazzpreis (German Jazz Award) selection is particularly interesting for several reasons.

This is nominally a “local” award with an emphasis on German residents, but that very fact already contains its inclusiveness. After all, we all know that Berlin is a hub for artists from all over the world, while other German cities are also quite open to newcomers who initially come to study at music academies and then stay to live and work in the country. So this selection actually features musicians from various countries, as well as many Germans I had previously only followed sporadically.

There are also a few international categories, which are still strongly focused on European candidates. For example, among the nominees for Best Big Band is Maria Faust Sacrum Facere—the fantastic ensemble of the Estonian-Danish saxophonist I’ve been following for a long time; then the Webber/Morris Big Band, and so on. In the shortlist for Best Album is Angel Falls by Sylvie Courvoisier & Wadada Leo Smith. It’s not just about Eurocentrism as such, but also about the balance between mainstream and avant-garde, which compete here on equal footing. As is often the case with such selections, I think it’s ultimately irrelevant who “wins.” But it is both interesting and important to look at these broader selections and get to know some new, valuable, and significant artists.

Eurojazzist recap

Just a few days after publication, the article Are You a Jazz Audiophile? became the most-read of all 20 pieces published on Eurojazzist so far. More than the statistic itself, I’m glad that readers are commenting on both articles and Notes—that there is genuine feedback and an exchange of impressions and opinions. And that’s not limited to this topic, which is more immediately communicative than, say, a review of an avant-garde album.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many relevant jazz concerts in Serbia, so more extensive concert and festival reports will have to wait until the first trip—which will be a visit to jazzahead! at the end of April. I’m also preparing several written interviews, and for now I’m only thinking about some kind of audio podcast format. At the moment, my writing rhythm is at the desired level, and I’m looking forward to online encounters and getting to know jazz enthusiasts from Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world.

In one of my previous columns, I mentioned that I used to work for a company that served as the Serbian importer and distributor for releases from ECM Records, ACT Music, Enja, Harmonia Mundi, CAM Jazz, and many other labels. That was my specific domain, while the colleague I shared an office with handled top hi-fi brands like Rega, Naim, Harbeth, Sonus Faber, Accuphase, Devialet, ProAc, Clearaudio, and others. We had a showroom where people would come to see and hear the gear they were interested in. Given that these speakers, amplifiers, turntables, and CD players were often very expensive—even for well-off customers—selling this kind of equipment was a process. Many visitors would come several times and spend hours in the showroom, talking with us and listening carefully before deciding to spend several thousand euros.

When I started working at the company, I wasn’t very familiar with this kind of clientele. I was interested exclusively in the music itself, and I didn’t have the money for serious equipment anyway. Still, from time to time I had to step in for my colleague and host hi-fi customers. Until I got the hang of it, there were moments when I felt confused and out of my depth. Years later, I would often retell one anecdote: a potential customer once asked me what we were listening to in the showroom. Naively, I started explaining which track it was, the artist, and the album. The man interrupted me and clarified the question—he meant which cables we were listening to. He had noticed some new interconnect cables and wanted to know the brand, technical specs, and so on. We weren’t listening to music—we were listening to cables.

Of course, this comical situation doesn’t represent the entire world of audiophiles. To be fair, most people simply want to hear music on the best possible system. As a kid, I grew up on small cassette players and later on mediocre mini hi-fi systems. I first heard a CD when I was around 15 or 16, and I bought my first decent second-hand hi-fi system at 21. Each step brought a noticeable improvement in sound—the nuances became clearer, warmer, more detailed. Even people who aren’t particularly obsessed with music can hear the difference between low-budget and top-tier headphones. Anyone can appreciate the richness of sound that reveals itself in a proper audiophile listening room. Everything starts from this simple fact—but how far an individual audiophile will go in their technical fascination depends on personal preferences and budget. And it’s not a cheap hobby.

When it comes to playlists designed for listening in showrooms, hi-fi shows and presentations, we can roughly say that the most common choices are classic rock, classical music, and jazz, along with various singer-songwriter styles (blues, country, americana), often with an emphasis on specialized audiophile labels like Stockfisch Records or Master Music. If we zoom in on jazz playlists, vocal tracks—especially female vocals—are very common. Of course, jazz standards were always present.

Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” is probably the track I’ve heard most often at such events. Chuck Mangione’s “Children of Sanchez” was another staple. Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue was never far away. The most frequently selected tracks tend to showcase a wide dynamic range—from deep bass to shimmering cymbals—or highlight the acoustic qualities of instruments: the touch of fingers on an acoustic guitar, the knock against the wood of a double bass, or a saxophone placed very close in the sound image. If all of that appears in a single track—even better.

Speaking of our own presentations, I was particularly amused by the fact that the former company owner was (and still is) a big fan of the ECM sound. As a result, our playlists often included pieces that weren’t typical for hi-fi demonstrations. For example, we would play The Köln Concert, which was a rare choice. Or Tomasz Stanko, whom no one else seemed to play. Also some of Jan Garbarek’s 2000s albums, Enrico Rava, Charles Lloyd, and so on. Of course, the usual audiophile favorites were always there too, so the playlists struck a good balance between genuinely great music and tracks that were often produced specifically for these kinds of listening situations.

It’s easy to hear the difference between cheap headphones and top-tier audiophile gear when playing the same music. But what exactly is audiophile music? How do we distinguish a well-produced album from a poorly produced one? Why is ECM founder Manfred Eicher considered a legendary producer, while others are not? I won’t go into technical deep dives here; instead, I’ll rely on personal experience and impressions. While I’m generally wary of the idea that production matters more than the musical substance, I certainly appreciate a well-produced album. It’s just that the meaning of “well-produced” can vary from listener to listener.

Let’s start with a basic principle of modern production. Depending on the target audience—especially if the goal is to reach as many listeners as possible—music is often “flattened” so that the difference between listening on basic headphones and on a sophisticated system is minimized. If the target is audiophiles, the recording, production, and mastering will emphasize a wide dynamic range—both the bass and the cymbals, so to speak. Of course, this assumes that the music itself lends itself to such treatment.

When I started working at One-HiFi, one of my tasks was to prepare 90-second audio samples for our website, showcasing the albums we imported and sold. I did this in Audacity, where each track has a visual representation of its frequency range. In a screenshot presented here, I placed a blues-rock track next to an ECM recording (removing the names to avoid bias).

In the first track, everything is pushed to the maximum—because it needs to sound good on headphones in noisy environments. The second track, however, requires better listening conditions. It won’t sound great on public transport, but on a home system it becomes clear why it’s considered audiophile while the first one isn’t. Regardless of personal taste, under the right conditions an entire world of sound unfolds. This depends primarily on the musicians and their arrangements—but in the final result we also hear many other things: the acoustics of the recording space, the distance of instruments from the microphones, post-production choices that either enhance or preserve natural sound, and so on.

In 2015, my former boss moved to Australia and started the new company, while I continued running the business in Serbia for a few more years before we eventually shut it down. During those years, we had a new space organized differently, so I had both a desk and a hi-fi setup in my office. In my case, this was usually a combination of Rega amplification, streamer, and turntable, paired with Harbeth speakers (we also had the fancy Devialet Phantom there, though I preferred the more standard setup).

This meant I had considerable freedom in choosing playlists for myself and the visitors. During those years, my go-to audiophile choice was often Jakob Bro’s album Gefion. The subtle interplay between Bro, Joey Baron, and Thomas Morgan was musically outstanding, while also beautifully revealing sonic nuances—Baron’s cymbals, Morgan’s warm bass, Bro’s guitar, which completely avoided the “guitar hero” aesthetic. As for vocal albums, Tord Gustavsen’s What Was Said, featuring Simin Tander, was another favorite. Not a typical vocal jazz album, but a beautiful blend of Gustavsen’s spirituality and Tander’s clear voice. What I always appreciated about ECM was that sense of “space”—a feeling that the music was as natural as possible, not artificially brought closer just to highlight every tiny detail.

That said, even hyper-detailed sound can be appealing. Take the double bass, for instance. It’s a beautiful instrument, and it sounds wonderful when its “wooden” quality is captured—the resonance of the strings, the tapping on the body, the sharpness of the bow, the subtle noise of fingers on the strings. Serbian double bassist Nenad Vasilic, based in Vienna, recorded an intriguing solo album, The Art of the Balkan Bass, which later became quite well-known in audiophile circles. Tracks from this album started appearing in equipment reviews in prestigious hi-fi magazines, often used to describe how speakers or amplifiers were tested.

For this piece, I tried to dig up some of the playlists I created for hi-fi events. I found one I made for Aleksandar for a hi-fi event in Melbourne, where I combined classical music, vocal and instrumental jazz, along with some rock classics. Alongside staples like Patricia Barber, Diana Krall, and Melody Gardot, I included Youn Sun Nah—specifically the track “Momento Magico.” Not a typical choice, but she strikes a good balance between artistic authority and audiophile appeal. Knowing Aleksandar’s affinity for ECM, I also included Matthias Eick, Giovanni Guidi (his trio works particularly well in this context), Jakob Bro, Tomasz Stańko, and others.

I don’t have a grand conclusion to tie all of this together. Instead, I’ll invite you—if you’ve made it this far—to share your own audiophile experiences and thoughts. How important is it for you to listen to music on high-quality equipment? How much attention do you pay to production? Do you prefer listening to jazz loudly or quietly? At home or live? And what are your favorite “audiophile” jazz albums and tracks?

The way we listen to music—and the horizon of expectations we bring to it—is partly shaped by our perception of genre. If we are listening to classic jazz, we look for memorable themes and virtuosic soloists. If we know it is free jazz, we may hope for extended playing techniques or perhaps particularly energetic saxophone playing. In ambient music we look for something else—an emphasis on sound texture rather than on the harmonic or improvisational development of compositions. If you have been in love with music your whole life, you will probably approach it with an open and curious spirit; but your past experience will also draw you toward something familiar in new music as well, an anchor that helps you place it somewhere within your own system of values and emotions.

Sometimes we encounter music that catches us unprepared. Yet it also seduces us with something unfamiliar—something difficult to define and to explain to ourselves using the usual, established ways. I encountered this phenomenon while listening to the album Live at Atelier du Plateau by a lineup called Ensemble Ensemble, consisting of Mari Kvien Brunvoll (voice, electronics), George Dumitriu (violin, viola), Eve Risser (piano, prepared piano, alto flute), Kim Myhr (guitar), and Toma Gouband (drums, percussion).

I had already heard some of these musicians in different contexts before—I loved Eve Risser in the famous avant-garde jazz trio En Corps with Benjamin Duboc and Edward Perraud, and Mari Kvien Brunvoll in a duo format with guitarist Stein Urheim. I was also fairly familiar with Kim Myhr’s body of work. But the wonderful thing about experimental and improvised music is that it is not simply the sum of the individual characteristics of the musicians playing together in a concert or studio. Or at least it should not be, in its finest moments.

Which brings us to the next challenge: how do we write about music that does not follow any conventions—music for which the language of references is not particularly suitable, because at its core lies an anti-referential impulse, a step away from what we have learned to describe in certain familiar ways? I do not have a good or precise answer to that.

For me, the starting point was Eve Risser’s piano—her minimalist, repetitive playing style interwoven with avant-garde excursions. Then there is the sonic layer added by Mari Kvien Brunvoll: a dreamy kind of singing that carries the magic of an ancient folk song, something you imagine like a spell from a fairy tale. Around these anchors unfolds a whole web of sounds, melodic branches, and small gestures across different instruments. Rustles, chirps, breezes.

Once you are sufficiently immersed in the experience of this music, a kind of synesthesia occurs and you begin to perceive it visually: depending on your sensibility, it may feel like entering a deep forest, or witnessing the flourishing of non-human life along the banks of a mountain river. Perhaps it is a descent into the unconscious, into the territory of reverie and dreams. And yet it is not really about Ensemble Ensemble achieving the specific formal qualities of “ambient” or “cinematic” music. Rather, the music transgresses from what we consider the “experience of music” toward something not necessarily “deeper,” but certainly different and more challenging—art in its abstract form, freed from self-imposed definitions.

At this point, we might imagine this to be some kind of demanding music that must be listened to with the greatest possible concentration and without external distractions—certainly not something that “plays in the background.” My own experience was quite the opposite: I listened to Ensemble Ensemble while doing my day job, while driving long distances, while preparing lunch—and of course also while “listening for the sake of listening.” In all of these situations, the only thing that mattered was turning the volume up enough to hear every possible rustle and sound the quintet might produce. I enjoyed the counterpoint between music that radiates pure beauty and a kind of magical rapture on the one hand, and formal abstraction on the other.

All of this may have little to do with “jazz” in its historical or formal musicological sense. But it has everything to do with its essential qualities: freedom, the creation of music in the moment, and the venture into the unknown. The search for challenge in music—whether you approach it as a trained musical professional or as a curious music lover.

Quite a lot has already been written across the internet about AI music, and especially about the new and rather bizarre phenomenon of “identity theft” involving jazz musicians on streaming services. If you happened to miss it, here’s the short version: on Spotify and elsewhere, numerous albums are appearing that are supposedly released by well-known jazz musicians—both living ones and those who passed away long ago. The album covers feature very clumsy AI-generated images (one has already become legendary: “Paul Bley” failing to reach the piano keys, his hands hanging in midair in a playing position), while the music on these “albums” obviously does not belong to the musicians whose names are listed. The list of jazz musicians affected by this keeps growing.

Ted Gioia wrote a very clear overview of this phenomenon, speculating that jazz might be particularly targeted because jazz musicians’ discographies are often extensive and complicated to track, making fraud less likely to be noticed. I can’t see any other economic logic here except collecting revenue once jazz fans click to hear the “new album” by their favorite musician.

And now a personal case. I had already read about all this and informed myself before I stumbled upon a new Joey Baron album on Tidal. I was listening to one of the albums I had previously saved, but the app also showed some recommendations for new releases based on my listening habits. Of course, no matter how hard I try, I can’t keep track of everything every jazz musician releases, so I thought: “Look, Joey Baron has a new album—great!” The cover showed some kind of cartoon visual—OK. I love him as a sideman (who doesn’t), but there really aren’t that many albums under his own leadership. I used to like the album We’ll Soon Find Out from 2000, with Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, and Arthur Blythe. Excellent—I’ll listen to it later.

And then I did. What started playing was some mediocre rock music with a male vocal in the foreground. I won’t even post a screenshot or mention the supposed album title, so that you’re not tempted to click on it and put money into the pockets of scammers (even if it’s only 0.00006 cents per stream, or whatever it is).

I remember that once I “missed” in a similar way with another jazz musician, who turned out to share his name with someone in the pop world. So I tried to be fair and check whether there might be another Joey Baron. There wasn’t. Instead, Google showed… well, actually not exactly Google, but AI—Gemini’s overview inside Google’s service:

“**** is an EP released in 2026 by jazz drummer Joey Baron under the IDENTITY MUSICA LABEL. The release, featuring the title track, showcases his experimental, improvised style and is available on streaming platforms like Spotify.”

OK. At that point it already had a strong Skynet vibe for me. One artificial intelligence covering for another. There is absolutely no “experimental, improvised style” here, so it’s clearly a complete fabrication. To make matters worse, this was the only Google result. I then went to several reliable reference websites to check whether Joey Baron had actually released the EP in question, but the album wasn’t there either.

Next I tried to investigate this IDENTITY MUSICA LABEL, but couldn’t find an exact match. What I did find was a page called “Identity Music,” inviting us to “Join a growing community of independent artists and record labels who trust Identity Music to power their success.” If this is even the same entity that released the “Joey Baron album.” It’s not impossible that IDENTITY MUSICA LABEL is trying to steal the identity of an organization with a similar name, IDENTITY MUSIC, which distributes music by independent artists to streaming platforms.

I wouldn’t dare speculate further about what exactly is going on here. I’m sure musicians have already started filing lawsuits en masse, hiring lawyers, and so on. At some point a legal solution for this new situation will emerge. This is a completely different case from AI-generated music released under the alleged names of non-existent musicians (which is also weird stuff but at least has some kind of logic). Here we’re dealing with literal identity theft: you present yourself as someone else in order to gain some benefit.

After thinking about it a bit more, I came to the conclusion that fundamentally this isn’t really a problem related to the “AI phenomenon” at all—it’s much more mundane. For decades now we’ve been receiving spam emails in which a Nigerian prince or some distant relative offers us a huge inheritance if we just send them $1,000, or SMS messages telling us to collect a supposed package at the post office (and then we install malware on our phones). Or think about fake news, which predates the kind of artificial intelligence we talk about today in public discourse.

With the Nigerian prince we automatically know he isn’t real; fake news we sometimes recognize more easily, sometimes less so. Now we have a new technology in the equation, but the underlying principle seems the same.

In that sense I actually feel a certain relief, because this isn’t something civilization is incapable of dealing with. All we really need is basic digital literacy and the awareness that the world of digital music distribution is now a target for scammers as well, just like everything else. Just as a news item sometimes seems suspicious so we check it (and discover it’s fake), and then stop following the site that published it, the same will happen here. If Spotify, Tidal, and the others don’t solve the situation with AI impersonators, they will become the equivalent of fake-news sites—and that’s far too big a reputational (and financial) risk. If they are greedy enough not to react to the new situation, I believe they will be heading straight for disaster.

Old Listens

Perhaps this whole Joey Baron episode discouraged me, or maybe I just felt a bit of fatigue, but this week I didn’t listen to any new albums at all (I’m not counting James Blake, who isn’t relevant for a jazz column). I received several April and May releases from a few labels I’m in contact with: I downloaded the albums but haven’t played them yet.

It’s possible I also put pressure on myself to always have something “new—and even newer” so that I’d have material for the column. But from the perspective of a listener, of course I sometimes need to stop, pull the handbrake, and return to the albums I’ve enjoyed the most so far this year. Or to some old records. Or simply enjoy moments of silence.

So my recommendation this week is to pause from time to time and enjoy what we already have and know, no matter how informed and curious we consider ourselves as followers of current developments in music and culture in general.

Jazz Across Europe

I already mentioned that Romania is a country with several outstanding festivals. The first one I attended—and the one that holds a special place in my heart—is the Garana Jazz Festival, with its hippie atmosphere in the middle of the mountains. It takes place every July and brings together many major names from the world and European jazz scenes, sometimes with a strong focus on ECM and ACT artists, but often flirting with fusion and mainstream as well.

Here the balance between the festival’s atmosphere and its musical quality is perfect. And since Garana is relatively close to the city where I live (Pančevo is only a 3–4 hour drive), I sometimes come just for a day or two to catch a particular concert I’m interested in. If you’re coming from other parts of Europe, the nearest airport is in Timisoara and it’s well served by low-cost flights. This year the festival takes place from July 9 to 12, and you can check the program here.

At the recent concert by John Dikeman and Marina Džukljev in Belgrade, which I wrote about earlier this week, I also met the Turkish double bassist Esat Ekincioğlu, and we talked about the festival scene in Istanbul. He recommended the Show of Hands festival, which has an interesting concept: only solo or duo formations perform.

I remembered that in previous years I’d also seen some ECM artists there whom I like. This year, for example, the lineup includes pianist Colin Vallon and classical guitarist Zsófia Boros. Unfortunately, the dates—from April 15 to 18—don’t work for me at all, but I warmly recommend this year’s program, which was recently announced.

Ever since I first visited the Jazzfestival Saalfelden, I have been fond of the Austrian jazz scene—whether we are talking about festivals, clubs, or ultimately the bands coming from that country. The Institute of Jazz at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz has for decades been particularly important in Serbia, as a place where many Serbian jazz musicians were educated, thanks to a combination of geographical proximity and a high-quality study program.

I began paying special attention to Austrian jazz and improvised music around the time when I curated the music program of the Nova Festival in Pančevo (2015–2018). During those years we had excellent cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade, which financially supported the visits of its musicians to our festival. Today that musical collaboration continues through support for concerts at Radio Belgrade’s Studio 6—but more about that on another occasion.

For financial reasons, we mostly opted for duo or trio formations. Still, it was during that time that I first heard about Shake Stew and later continued to follow their work. They were one of those “fun” jazz bands: the kind you can dance and bounce to at a concert, recommend to friends who are not particularly fond of the genre—or of the idea of jazz as music full of complicated improvisations and rhythmic detours. Shake Stew definitely have a stable rhythm and drive, and that is one of their main strengths. They also have catchy themes. They are very enjoyable to listen to. But none of this means their music is trivial or emotionally limited. I would even say it is quite complex in terms of arrangement, even though it rests on seemingly simple premises.

This year’s album TEN ONE TWO, with which they begin marking the band’s tenth anniversary (a third album is also expected by the end of 2026), can be seen as the culmination of their still relatively young career. It is a double album with very carefully measured dramaturgy, which proves to be especially important for such an extensive release. Seven permanent and two guest musicians perform on the album (we will list them at the end of the text), while bandleader Lukas Kranzelbinder plays double bass, e-bass, guembri, kalimba, log drums, mellotron, and tambourine.

The fact that Kranzelbinder and his crew command such a rich palette of instruments makes it easier for them to sound lush and diverse. But that is only the starting point, and Shake Stew do not play all their cards at once.

A good example is the opening track Wood, which lasts nine minutes and develops very slowly. The piece opens with a repetitive melody on the kalimba. Their recognizable trance/groove rhythm is present here, already labeled as kraut-jazz in reference to German krautrock legends Can. Over it unfold melodious horn lines; solo sections alternate with orchestrated passages, and the collective climax arrives only near the very end—but even then it does not explode excessively. Then Tristan Junk throws us into a whirlwind of ethio-jazz and melodies reminiscent of Mulatu Astatke and Getatchew Mekurya. This track has all the qualities of a hit single, yet we still sense that Shake Stew have plenty more up their sleeves.

The focus is on collective playing and fine-grained nuance in arrangements and solos. Within songs that have a clear direction, many interesting things happen on a micro level—from raising and lowering dynamics, to subtle interactions between the horn section and the rhythm section, and ultimately simply good improvisations. Somewhere around the fifth track Ascendance, it feels as if Shake Stew shift into fourth gear—at least in terms of tempo—only to continue the seesaw of slower and faster tracks throughout the rest of the album.

So when I mentioned “measured dynamics”, I was referring precisely to this very skillful sequencing of tracks, which made me think that Shake Stew approach music also from the perspective of listening logic. If you have a double album, you do not want the listener to grow tired or saturated after 30–40 minutes; instead, the entire work must feel complete and rounded. You want the listener to reach the very end—and for the final tracks to be just as engaging as the first ones.

The second part of this release was produced with a more pronounced live vibe and therefore offers a somewhat different listening experience, which justifies the division into two formal parts. At the same time, this is still the same band with its recognizable qualities: a very refined and organic sense of blending modern American and European jazz, African musical traditions, soul and funk sensibilities, and an underground rock drive.

The fact that I didn’t feel the need to single out any individual in this review doesn’t diminish their excellence, nor does it suggest the album lacks outstanding solos. Rather, I simply wanted to highlight this “band” nature of Shake Stew and the mutual understanding that comes from a decade of working together.

Happy anniversary - with the hope that many more will follow.

Shake Stew are:
Lukas Kranzelbinder – Double Bass, E-Bass, Guembri, Kalimba, Log Drums, Mellotron, Tambourine
Yvonne Moriel – Alto Sax, Flute, FX
Mario Rom – Trumpet
Johannes Schleiermacher – Tenor Sax, Flute, FX
Oliver Potratz – E-Bass, Fender Bass VI, FX
Nikolaus Dolp – Drums, Percussion
Herbert Pirker – Drums, Percussion, Log Drums, Tambourine, Shaker

Special Guests:
JJ Whitefield – Electric Guitar (on “Tristan Junk”)
Pablo Herrasti-Fajardo – Modular Synthesizer (on “Tiger”)

Can freedom be faked in free jazz? Do free jazz musicians sometimes fall into mannerism, repeating the same phrases and tricks? How do we tell a good free jazz musician from a bad one?

Once upon a time, it was enough for me that a saxophonist went into falsetto or started growling, squealing, and shrieking for me to feel excited. If everything was wild and loud—even better. The very concept of free jazz is inherently thrilling, but over the years I began to notice how even free jazz musicians can fall into routine. I don’t think this is intentional, or merely riding on the coattails of a tradition with a great reputation; rather, it’s the simple fact that it is difficult to invent something truly new and, in the literal sense, liberated from musical patterns and conventions of playing within the subgenre. Most musicians approach free improvisation with a pure heart (since there isn’t much money in it anyway), but at the end of the day there are not many whom we recognize as “the real thing.”

I think I immediately experienced saxophonist John Dikeman as one of those, ever since he performed in Belgrade in 2013 with the frenetic free-punk-jazz trio Cactus Truck. Later he returned to Serbia many times in different formations. To the broader jazz audience, his most high-profile engagements would probably be his appearances with William Parker and Hamid Drake, or as part of the ensemble Universal Indians + Joe McPhee. But that is only a small part of his activities.

For me personally, his duo performances with Serbian drummer Aleksandar Škorić remain unsurpassed: both of them lived in the Netherlands for a long time, where they met, and later played concerts that catapult us like a time machine somewhere into the year 1967. Or at least into how I imagine duo concerts by John Coltrane and Rashied Ali—or some other sax-drums duo from the crucial years of free jazz—might have sounded. The combination of explosiveness, spirituality, and creative madness at their concerts would always bring joyful smiles and a sense of ecstasy.

Naturally, I was thrilled when I saw that he would play no fewer than three concerts in Belgrade—one in a duo with pianist Marina Džukljev from Novi Sad, and two in an international formation called FLEG BRN, completed by Christopher Robin Cox (trombone), Peter Ajtai (double bass), and Škorić on drums.

I was especially interested to see him with Marina Džukljev, because until now Dikeman has mostly shone live in lineups that themselves bring a powerful drive—an explosion grounded as much in the rhythm section as in the saxophone spectacle. In addition, Marina Džukljev is a pianist with roots in classical training, but who has embraced free improvisation and extended piano techniques, performing and recording with avant-garde and free improvisers in Slovenia, Austria, and Germany, among others. She has never played jazz standards or performed in traditional jazz ensembles, approaching the genre from a different angle. (Peter Margasak also wrote very beautifully about her on Substack). In short, I wanted to point out that her style is often even more abstract than Dikeman’s, which is nevertheless rooted in the classics of American free jazz—so their first joint concert in a duo formation carried a pleasant dose of uncertainty.

The venue called UK Parobrod is small and in fact resembles a slightly larger room or an old-fashioned salon apartment. This format was perfect because there is no need for amplification, and there is no distance between the artists and the audience. When I sat in the first row, in practice that meant I was one or two meters away from Dikeman’s saxophone. Which can also be seen in the first video that follows:

Although I earlier mentioned the Coltrane–Ali duo as a reference in the context of performances with Škorić, here I would rather place Dikeman in the same sentence with another great American saxophonist, Charles Gayle. Or, if we stretch it a bit, we can also hear something of Brötzmann’s fury. What excites me particularly about Dikeman is the rawness of the sound he achieves—the specific “dry” quality of his tone that almost physically carves itself into the listener’s eardrums.

It is as if the entire history of the best moments of free jazz has converged in his playing, which is nevertheless unique enough not to sound like a replica or reproduction. More like an evergreen. The same goes for something elusive and perhaps insufficiently describable: the feeling that the musician before us is sincere and truly liberated, that he is ready to strip himself musically even more than we expect, to push just a little harder and cut into our emotional tissue. These are not beautiful melodies that caress us, but a kind of shock therapy—a call to step out of our safe zone and enter the music with a heightened state of awareness.

In this constellation Marina Džukljev was the “European voice.” We often saw her reaching into the belly of the piano, using various objects to modify the instrument’s sound, leading Dikeman’s sound into the realm of abstraction. Personally, I like Džukljev best when she offers hints of her classical richness on the keys, when she demonstrates an exceptional sense for the dramaturgy of a solo. She never overplays and knows very well when to merely tease the imagination, when to “explode,” and when to return to sound experiment. From time to time she reminds us that she can play with great virtuosity, but she does so only when it truly makes sense within the sonic picture of the band she is performing with. In that sense she is a perfect team player and a good fit for ensembles that rely more on interaction and mutual understanding than on rapid-fire instrumental barrage. On Friday, this was a very good fit.

On Saturday and Sunday, a lineup called FLEG BRN performed at two different locations in the city. Alongside Dikeman, who for this occasion also brought a baritone saxophone, the band consisted of Christopher Robin Cox on trombone, double bassist Peter Ajtai, and the previously mentioned drummer Aleksandar Škorić. I missed the first concert, held on Saturday at the club Guvernanta, but I did show up at Strogi Centar, a club that hosts a variety of performances—from mainstream jazz to funk, and ultimately free jazz as well. Like many Belgrade clubs and cafés in the city center, this one has the atmosphere of a large living room, with wooden parquet floors and high ceilings. The intimate setting was therefore guaranteed, so even the presence of 15–20 die-hard free jazz devotees did not make the space feel half-empty. It was just right and comfortable for everyone, yet still sufficiently boiling with energy.

This time everything unfolded within the realm of expectations: the band began grinding mercilessly from the very start. It was a true Machine Gun. I think I could watch Dikeman and Škorić in almost any combination, so at first I did not pay much attention to the contributions of Christopher Robin Cox and Peter Ajtai. That does not mean their playing was lacking—only that I am too big a fan of the aforementioned duo.

It was not entirely new to me, but this time I particularly noticed how Dikeman impresses not only with energy, spirituality, and that elusive quality we call “sincerity,” but also with formidable technique and control. Imagine a car entering a sharp turn at full speed while overtaking a truck; somehow it does not fly off into the ditch, but maintains control and exits the danger with great precision, continuing to race even faster. In the same way Dikeman successfully reins in his own volleys, stacking several short passages before launching into growls and screams—once we as listeners have sufficiently entered his rhythm.

Perhaps I did not entirely enjoy the fact that the performance was divided into two equal sets; it felt as if the break was too long and the momentum was lost. Fortunately, in the second part the band sounded even more inspired—we heard several excellent moments from Škorić and Ajtai, while Dikeman pushed his blues-inflected free playing, emphasizing the original American contribution to the subgenre.

After the concert with Marina Džukljev ended two evenings earlier, in casual conversation I remarked that the performance had been “the best possible European free jazz,” and was immediately asked whether I might be exaggerating. I found myself wondering—who exactly decides, and at what moment do statements like this become “truth”? Given that Dikeman and Džukljev are only in their early forties, and Škorić is in his thirties —still relatively young years for elite status in jazz—it is clear that a lot of time must pass before any of them becomes “canonized.” But my feeling is that they are on the right path.

Eurojazzist Randomizer is a loose-format column — a space for listening notes, side thoughts, new music, and jazz across Europe.

This jazz week has been particularly dynamic. Over the weekend, free-jazz saxophonist John Dikeman played two concerts in Belgrade, with one more coming up—I’ll be writing about the whole series in a separate piece. A few days earlier, on Thursday, I was one of the speakers at a presentation of Jazz Sketches by Vojislav Pantić—a jazz critic, programmer of the Belgrade Jazz Festival, and, broadly speaking, the most important jazz figure in Serbia over the past thirty years.

I had already read the manuscript in its working version with the task of writing the afterword, which prompted me to reflect more deeply on the subject matter. The book is a collection of previously published writings on Serbian jazz—reviews, interviews, concert reports, and the like—which many jazz enthusiasts will already have encountered in the daily newspaper Politika or elsewhere. For that reason, it was necessary to find a particular “angle” for my text, to notice something we may not already know about the material itself or about Voja’s style of writing.

Among other things, I focused on one aspect that struck me as both interesting and important. Occasionally, Vojislav Pantić opens a text with a kind of confession: that he once disliked a certain musician, or that he held some form of prejudice toward him or her. Perhaps it stemmed from an album or a concert that simply didn’t resonate with him, or something else entirely. What follows such an introduction is a moment of revelation—or simply the correction of a previous mistake—when he encounters that same musician or band in a different context: at another concert, or two or three albums later. This is not the usual observation that a musician has “improved” and now sounds better than five years ago. Rather, Voja never shied away from explicitly admitting that he had once been wrong, and that he was now revising his opinion.

There are several reasons why I chose to address this particular aspect of the book, but above all I find the deeply human dimension of it important. What we write about jazz is not truth carved in stone; it is not the unassailable word of an authority that the reader is expected to accept and obey without question. Just as our musical tastes are not fixed forever—and different things speak to us as the years go by—the same applies to writing or thinking about music. At one moment we think one thing, and later we think another. Or we realize that something we wrote earlier was insufficiently considered, that we did not fully understand something, or simply that we wrote something foolish. All of that is perfectly normal and human. But it is even better when we speak and write about it openly.

Beyond basic human honesty, such admissions are also valuable because they strengthen the credibility of a journalist or critic. If someone is prepared to swallow their pride in public and write something like that, readers are far more likely to believe that they write sincerely about music in general—and that the album they listened to or the concert they attended is not merely a pretext for demonstrating linguistic virtuosity or intellectual superiority over the reader. By acknowledging mistakes, or by revisiting and reconsidering what we have written, we establish a deeper connection with the reader. We show them that they are not in a subordinate position to the author, but that our experiences of music are equally valid—perhaps simply different.

At the same time, we suggest that their own experience of music need not remain fixed or determined by prior assumptions or earlier opinions. Everyone is invited to evolve, to reflect on what they experienced at a concert or while listening to music at home. We remind ourselves that jazz is a space of freedom—not only for the musicians who play it, but also for all of us who take pleasure in it. Freedom of thought, of perception, of feeling, and of everything else that jazz music awakens in us.

New Listens

On some chart or blog I came across the album Simple Fall, recorded jointly by the cellist Vincent Courtois and the pianist Colin Vallon. The latter is one of my favorite musicians on the ECM Records label, so I am always pleased to hear him in a slightly different context. On his ECM albums there are usually a few more adventurous pieces that serve as a counterweight to the central melodic numbers. Simple Fall offers even more of those freer excursions, while Courtois himself is a musician I have often enjoyed listening to—mostly in the ensembles of other bandleaders.

The album is released by BMC Records, the Hungarian label that has been particularly active in recent years and whose selection of musicians I find consistently intriguing. Alongside the best of Hungarian jazz, they also highlight artists from the French scene and from other parts of Europe. From their latest batch I found the album Live at Atelier du Plateau by the group Ensemble Ensemble especially interesting. The ensemble consists of Mari Kvien Brunvoll (voice, electronics), George Dumitriu (violin, viola), Eve Risser (piano, prepared piano, alto flute), Kim Myhr (guitar), and Toma Gouband (drums, percussion). I would not quite call it “jazz” so much as a free journey through various styles of contemporary improvised music—but that distinction is not particularly important. There is also a new duo Love at Last Sight by Evi Filippou (vibraphone, percussion, voice) and Robert Lucaciu (double bass), featuring Hayden Chisholm as a guest on one track. Chisholm also wrote one of the more entertaining sets of liner notes I have read recently.

In the category of so-called “safe choices,” I listened this week to Bill Frisell and his new album In My Dreams. There is little new to say about his music, but I always enjoy it when he records with string players, who add a particularly beautiful sense of layering to his sound. Pure, simple beauty.

Another noteworthy release this week arrived via the Eurojazzist mailbox: the Metropole Orkest, which is issuing a new album titled Arakatak to mark its 80th anniversary. Conducted by one of the orchestra’s regular guest conductors, composer and arranger Miho Hazama, the album also features compositions by Vince Mendoza, Donny McCaslin, Tineke Postma, Mark Guiliana, Shai Maestro, and Louis Cole. Although big bands are not regularly on my playlist, this time I decided to break my listening routine—and I did not regret it.

Jazz Across Europe

A moment ago I mentioned BMC Records, which stands for the Budapest Music Centre. Within this institution there is also the Opus Jazz Club, known for its consistently excellent regular program as well as occasional thematic events. For many years now, Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin has been among the most interesting European festivals, held in the two cities with a focus on French and German musicians and their collaborations. For the third year in a row there is also a Hungarian branch called Jazzdor Strasbourg-Budapest.

This year’s edition will take place from March 25 to 28. One project that particularly caught my attention is Garden of Silences, featuring the outstanding French violinist Clément Janinet and the legendary Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, performing in a quartet completed by Ambre Villermoz on accordion and Robert Lucaciu on double bass. Full programme is listed here.

In March 2023, a dramatic statement regarding his health was posted on the official Facebook page of Peter Brötzmann. Alongside certain factual details about what had happened to him, and the announcement that he would be unable to perform until further notice, he added:

NO GOOD NEWS, MY FRIENDS, BUT IT IS HOW IT IS AND YES, I WILL DO MY BEST TO STAY WITH YOU IN WHAT FORM AND FUNCTION EVER. ALL GOOD AND NOTHING TO COMPLAIN, BEST TO YOU ALL b.

At that moment, I could already sense that the end was approaching, so the news of his final departure did not take me by surprise. We never properly met in person, although I had several suitable opportunities to strike up a conversation; perhaps I felt a certain fear, or awe in the face of his greatness. Or maybe he simply always seemed like a so-called private person, someone who didn’t particularly enjoy being approached by fans after concerts. It’s also possible that I was completely wrong. Yes, I could have introduced myself in the capacity of a “jazz journalist,” but even then I felt too intimidated, as I am much younger than he was. I hadn’t even been born yet when he had already left behind a fantastic body of work on par with the greatest musical legends.

After he passed away, I aired his music several times on Radio Belgrade. The last time was last year, when we launched a series dedicated to presenting the most important free jazz albums in history. Naturally, Machine Gun held an unavoidable place as one of the key releases of European free jazz. I prepared the show, wrote an accompanying text about the album and the context in which it was created, but at the same time I became aware that I had listened to that album very rarely in my life. One could even say—more informatively than out of genuine, repeated listening on a CD player or stream.

Does that make me a “false fan,” given that I never truly enjoyed his most significant work to this day? What was it that kept me at a distance from the album—or simply failed to draw me in more strongly?

Early Free Jazz experience

Reflecting on this, and on the fact that my memories of Brötzmann are primarily tied to projects from the 2000s onward, I returned to the very beginnings of my engagement with free jazz. Around 2001, I began listening to jazz, mostly classics from the 1960s. Parallel to that listening experience, I attended the Ring Ring Festival in Belgrade every year, where some of the most radical performers of the time appeared—whether from electronic experimental music, world music avant-garde circles, or free jazz. Some concerts remain vivid in my memory; others had a dramatic impact on shaping my musical taste, such as the jazzcore/metal Italians Zu.

After hearing those wild and unrestrained instrumentalists live, any subsequent listening at home felt somewhat tame. Or at least different—without the aura and energy I felt watching performers tear it up on stage, pouring out liters of sweat or seemingly expelling their souls through painful cries drawn from the saxophone. Even when I wanted to feel something similar, I would have had to turn the volume all the way up, which was not always appropriate when living alongside other people and neighbors. Nor did I always feel like listening to extremely loud and intensely performed music at home. In any case, during the years when I fell in love with jazz, a listening split occurred: I continued to experience free jazz mostly live, and only rarely at home.

In 2004, I checked the program announcement of the Ring Ring Festival and began searching online to see what I might attend; my student budget allowed for a maximum of two concert evenings. At that time, I still didn’t know who or what Peter Brötzmann represented. But the program listed a band: M. Pliakas / M. Wertmüller / C. Brötzmann, along with other performers less relevant to this particular story. The concert was OK—extremely loud and wild—but I must admit I didn’t feel much enjoyment beyond the mere curiosity of watching an unusual band. The concept was excellent, but I didn’t feel emotional engagement. The guitarist was, of course, Caspar Brötzmann, whom I didn’t yet know was Peter’s son. The other two members were bassist Marino Pliakas and drummer Michael Wertmüller, whom I would encounter again three years later in a somewhat different setting.

Full Blast in Zagreb

At this point, a more seasoned listener of Peter Brötzmann’s oeuvre will already have recognized two-thirds of the band Full Blast—the explosive trio with which the Patriarch of European free jazz himself worked. This very lineup performed at the N.O. Jazz Festival in Zagreb in 2007, which would become especially significant for me for several reasons. Among other things, because for the festival production and the Students’ Centre Zagreb I conducted my first three interviews ever—none other than with William Parker, Satoko Fujii, and Wayne Horvitz. The festival program was excellent, and it was the first time I had traveled outside Serbia for more than a couple of days to attend a festival and see a bunch of jazz bands important to me. By then I had learned a few things about Brötzmann and the historical context in which he created, but I had neither listened to him closely nor seen him live.

When I entered the small hall of Teatar ITD within the SC Zagreb and the music began, it was something I will remember for the rest of my life. Peter Brötzmann, as usual, very serious and focused, wearing a blazer. Pliakas and Wertmüller dressed head to toe in black, as if they had come from some industrial band or from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. On one side, an extremely serious free jazzer; on the other, a rhythm section that sounded as though it came from a noise-rock/alternative milieu—only without what we would normally recognize as a rhythmic pulse. Instead, their playing was explosive and packed to the maximum with tension; the sound of bass and drums filled the space and covered the low registers, buzzing and rumbling like a fast train or a bulldozer, while in the higher registers Brötzmann himself dominated.

Until then, at most jazz concerts I had sensed a certain conventional dramaturgy—from introduction and development to climax, perhaps followed by a lighter resolution in the encore. Here, I had the impression that the climax lasted endlessly. I had never experienced anything like it. And so it went until the end of the concert, when Pliakas and Wertmüller were drenched in sweat, while Brötzmann looked as though he had simply finished another day at the office. Perhaps slightly tired, but unscathed.

I saw them once more later at Ring Ring in Belgrade, but this time with a sense of familiarity and without that initial shock and excitement I will never forget.

Sonore

Ring Ring again, and this time an incredible trio lineup: Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, and Peter Brötzmann. A trio of grandmasters of saxophone (and clarinet), whom I knew would deliver a spectacle. It was 2012, and alongside their Ring Ring concert, they had a performance scheduled the day before at the Cultural Centre of Novi Sad (an hour’s drive from Belgrade). I decided to attend both concerts.

The first day in Novi Sad offered a somewhat unusual concert experience. The hall, with large windows along one entire side, had extremely unsuitable acoustics. This was particularly painful during passages when Vandermark played clarinet in the higher registers; at times I had to cover my ears to protect my eardrums. Very few people attended—perhaps around thirty in total. The atmosphere could hardly be described as “heated,” but the three geniuses were there, playing in top form. It was especially interesting how much consideration and respect they showed one another, rotating roles—whether providing melodic support to the current soloist or engaging in fierce interaction. And so it went for some fifty minutes without interruption.

After the concert, a friend and I approached Brötzmann, but I merely stood by while the two of them exchanged a few words. Vladimir said something about how great the concert had been, and Brötzmann briefly thanked him and replied I saw that you enjoyed it.

The following day, the performance itself was equally good, but we were given a more suitable environment. The musicians were moved from the stage into the central space in front of a mounted black curtain, the sound was excellent, and the players inspired. There were perhaps 100–150 devotees of their music in the hall. In an article for Jazzin.rs at the time, I wrote: “If in Novi Sad Brötzmann was primarily in the mood for rapid-fire bursts and deviant playing on the tárogató, here he brought far more saxophone blues into the performance, along with those anthological moments when he gradually moves from quite beautiful melodies into brutal free.”

Peter Brötzmann and Heather Leigh

Three years later, Brötzmann formed a highly unusual duo for him, with the much younger pedal steel guitarist Heather Leigh. I saw this formation at the Jazz em Agosto festival in Lisbon in 2017, in the beautiful natural surroundings of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation museum complex. Just as during the Belgrade performance of the Sonore trio, I had the impression that Brötzmann had delved even deeper into his “free blues.” At that point he was 76 years old, and one might assume it was no longer so easy to pour out one’s soul every night and play extensive solos in the high registers. Since we are speaking of a musician who is an institution unto himself, it feels awkward to use the language of references—but there was indeed something Ayler-esque in this constellation.

Peter Brötzmann for the Young (or: the Younger)

Returning to my initial dilemma about Machine Gun and his early works: perhaps there is also something of a generational gap involved. When I began listening to and watching Brötzmann, I was in my twenties, and it is easy for me to imagine that today’s kids might not immediately dive into the very heart of European jazz and its early days. I can imagine they might want to hear something closer to their own sensibility, something containing elements of contemporary alternative aesthetics—like the duo with Heather Leigh, for example. For me (generationally), Full Blast felt closest, though from time to time I also listened to other bands from that period, such as the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet.

Be that as it may, I do not feel that I missed out on anything. I am immeasurably happy and grateful that our paths at least partially crossed; that as a young man and jazz journalist I had the opportunity to witness, live, some of the defining moments from the final chapters of the career of one of jazz’s true giants.